


To belong nowhere and everywhere

by A_meadows



Category: Call of Duty (Video Games)
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Gen, Possible Unrequited Love, Smut, Toxicity at times, bell is a young woman
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:21:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 51,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28389210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_meadows/pseuds/A_meadows
Summary: Bell tries to recover from CIA mind control as she starts a new life in Berlin. Unfortunately she battles with her feelings towards the man responsible for stealing her old life. And the minor inconvenience that she’s right in the middle of a war between two global super powers.
Relationships: Russell Adler & Bell, Russell Adler/Bell, original male character & bell
Comments: 135
Kudos: 193





	1. Solovetsky - Berlin

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is my first time writing in years so constructive criticism is always welcome! Hope you enjoy :)

Bell was terrified when Adler led her away from the others. The team were celebrating their victory, in their own way. The moment of respite was a stark contrast to the fire and destruction around them.

She suspected refusal to go with the man might result in force, given that she now knew the nature of their relationship. So she just followed, like she had been doing for months already.

“Where are we going?” She dared to asked.

“Just somewhere quiet,” he said, making no effort to make his tone sound reassuring.

Bell couldn’t help but feel instantly calmed by the serene Russian scenery. They stopped at the cliff sides of Solovetsky and she made the conscious decision to stand well back from the ledge. She found her gaze transfixed on the idle seas below, mesmerised at how the morning sun made the waters shimmer. The man came to stand in front of her, his tall form disrupting the view. He didn’t say anything, just lit a cigarette instead.

It surprised her when the first words to leave his mouth, without even looking at her, were:“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay as I can be.”

Adler turned around and she knew he was staring at her through his shades. For the first time in all the months they had spent together, Bell stared back at him unashamedly. There was no reason to be shy around him anymore, her excruciating crush on him be dammed given what she knew now. He moved closer to her slowly and easily. She noted how he was polite enough to angle his smoke away from her face when he blew it out of his lips.

“What the hell am I suppose to do with you now?” He said looking away from her again when he said it, his husky tone surprisingly soft and even somewhat humorous.

The young woman understood in this moment more than ever. In this whole mess, she really was and had been his responsibility. Not Hudson’s, not Park’s, _his_ .  That’s why it was just them two stood alone in the freezing cold right now.

“I dread to think,” she said, matching his quiet tone. “But whatever it is... I’m ready for it.”

Bell flinched slightly as his gloved fingers tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, a few pieces had become loose from the thick, long braid that snaked down her back. His hand then came to rest on her cheek, shielding it from the icy Russian air so the wind blowing against the other side just felt all the more colder. She craned her neck to look up at him and she found it eerie how his chiselled face seemed to remain emotionless despite the tender gestures. “I’d personally be risking an awful lot by letting you live.”

Bell’s heart began to race in her chest as these words sunk in. She felt herself begin to tremble and prayed somehow he didn’t notice despite having a hand on her. In the end just shut her eyes, becoming too overwhelmed by the moment. It briefly crossed the woman’s mind that he should just put a bullet in her, or a knife if need be, and cut the theatrics.

“For some reason, it’s a risk I’m a willing to take,” he concluded, pulling his hands away and she opened her eyes at the sudden loss of contact.

Bell looked down at the dry, washed out grass beneath her boots. Her eyes grew wet as she registered what he had just said to her. “Come on then, kid,” he said with a small sigh, walking ahead of her and flicking his cigarette to the side. “Let’s get out of here.”  
  


A few days later Adler had asked her how she felt about working for the BND in Berlin. She was visibly confused at this. It was a question that thinly veiled him  _telling_ ,  not  _ asking _ her, what she would be doing next.

“Are my services no longer required?”

The older man sat down opposite her in the small room she had been using for sleeping arrangements. “Here’s the thing, Bell. Me, Woods and Mason are going back to Langley-“

“America?”

“America yes,” he confirmed quickly, trying not to be irritated by her child like interruptions and genuine curiosity. “Park will obviously be going back to England.”

“But,” she began and he raised an eyebrow, impatiently waiting for her next response. “Perseus is still out there.”

“Stopping Perseus is still a priority, but we need to start looking at different angles. Thething is, Bell,” he said, leaning over in his chair, his tone firm and assertive now in order to dominate the conversation. “I can’t bring you with me, and you can’t work for the CIA, not yet at least.”

Bell couldn’t help the spike of rejection in her chest. She knew in her mind how ridiculous that was, but that was the nature of the suffocating insecurity within her. It was particularly nastier now she realised she did not belong anywhere anymore. Since finding out the truth about what had happened to her, she felt like she was in some sort of purgatory. It was like she was just existing, feeling completely detached from the world around her. “I don’t want to work for them anyway,” she retorted, feeling indignant as she said it.

A small smirk came to his face, reaffirming how silly she felt. “You’d run circles around all of us kid, I know you would.”

Bell couldn’t help the small giggle that escaped her lips, before her happy expression slowly came to a sad smile and then down to a worried look. “So you all leave and I just stay here?”

“For now...” he said, staring at the wall behind her for a moment before turning his attention back to her. “The long and short of it, theBND think you’re just a KGB defective.”

“And they really want me to work for them?” She said doubtfully.

“When I told them about your skill set they were quite eager to take you. Still, it is partly a favour to me though.”

Adler handed her the file he came in with and she took it with a small thank you. She flipped it open and scanned it briefly, the only thing she felt the need to memorise in that moment was brand her new name.  _Sabrina Winter._ Briefly she wondered who thought of that, she determined it wasn’t important.  


She shut the file with an audible slap. “You really went through all this trouble?”

“Trying to keep _you_ out of trouble,” he said in return, placing his hand on the table next to him to push himself up.

Alarm bells started to ring in her head as he started to make a show of checking his watch and zipping up his jacket. “They’ll look after you, don’t worry. I’ve explained you’re somewhat of a refugee right now. You’ll have somewhere to live, I’ve made sure they’ll pay you enough, and I’ve recommended you stick to decryption work more than combat, you’ll be fine, you just need to keep your head down for a while.”

“Are you leaving now?”

Adler paused before nodding, if she didn’t know any better she’d say he looked uncomfortable. The room was too small for both of them, and she was staring up at him now with terror in her eyes. He tried his best not to look at her, the man still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that her youthful face had the ability to make his insides ache with guilt at times.

“Adler I don’t know if I-“

“You’ll be fine,” he repeated bluntly, snuffing out any sign of emotion she had to offer. Whether it be unintentional or a calculated effort, he wouldn’t allow her to get under his skin. “If you want a second chance at life, you’ll need to get use to being away from me.”

Bell fiercely dashed away a tear that spilled onto her cheek, she wasn’t sure if she was more sad that he was leaving, or frustrated with herself that she still felt hopelessly and sickeningly attached.

Adler hovered for a moment, watching as she averted her gaze away from him and pouted at the wall. She seemed to be done with this conversation so he decided to take the window of opportunity to leave. “Goodbye for now kid. And Good luck.”

-

Bell wasn’t entirely surprised that just around a year later, news reached her that Adler and co were in Berlin again. Well more specifically, the whispers were vaguely about CIA agents, but she put two and two together. Gunfights had happened down town. There had been American branded bloodshed where she usually had her morning coffee and bought her clothes. When her fellow BND agents had told her, she didn’t bat an eye, simply rolled them instead.  “Americans,” they had all scoffed, they didn’t know the half of it she thought.

Still, she found herself driving out to the old safe house later that day. Why, she wasn’t entirely sure. The logical part of her knew she wouldn’t find them there. They wouldn’t be set up exactly the same as they were a year ago, like they had picked up where they left off.Bell grimaced as she looked at the steely grey building. She had forgotten how depressing the environment was, it was like being in a black and white film. 

She managed to daydream about all of  them with perfect visualisation and memory though. Park, Sims, the late Lazar, even Mason and Woods occupied her thoughts some days. And well... Adler was always in her mind somewhere. If not at the forefront of it, he lurked around in the back until she acknowledged him.

After that she carried on as usual regardless of the news. She was a BND agent now after all, she needn’t be concerned with CIA activity (even if said activity was loud enough to have everyone in Berlin concerned)

But it distinctively stung that he hadn’t reached out despite being in the same city as her. She thought to herself bitterly that she had probably passed him while he was buying a pack of cigarettes or taking a stroll down the street.

If the pain wasn’t sharp and maddening, it was dull and softly lingering. Regardless it was stubbornly persistent.

She didn’t try to deny to herself that she was hurt, rather she accepted it. She let it simmer away under her skin untouched, threatening to bubble over if she thought about it too hard.  _Be angry_ , _he’s a bastard_ ,  she thought to herself,  _ Be angry that he hasn’t contacted you instead of the fact he stole you away and brainwashed you, you’re perfectly justified in that, you utterly insane moron._

Counselling helped, she was sure of it. Of course she couldn’t tell her sweet, old German lady therapist (funded by the BND, how kind) the truth. Bell told her about Adler under the guise of him being an abusive ex boyfriend, and all the advice given in return was suitable enough.

Bell’s emotional turmoil was just settling when one of her German co workers poked his head into her small office one evening. People rarely came to see her directly, so when this man did she quickly wiped her headphones from her Walkman off her head and sat up straight.

“Miss Winter,” he spoke in his German tongue.

She recognises the man vaguely, but really she hadn’t mingled much with her associates. Most of them were restrained, no nonsense older gentlemen, who evidently didn’t have much time for her anyway.

This German man was younger and quite handsome, but not so much so that it fazed her.

“I think we’ve met briefly, I’m agent Roth,” the man said, not even looking at her as he sat himself down in the chair on the opposite side of her desk.

“Right, hello,” she said briskly, deciding that if he wouldn’t be polite she wouldn’t waste her energy on being so either. It was fine by her.

As he rummaged around in his brief case she sighed and rested her head on her hand, watching him idly. Glancing at the clock, she saw she was due to leave in five minutes.

“You and I have been assigned to work...” he said, pulling out a case file making her angle her eyes down at it half heartedly, “with the CIA-“

_ Oh god._

“- on one of their missions.”

“What mission?” She sighed and shook her head dismissively, beginning to feel sick.

“A drug raid,” he drawled, pulling out yet more paper and placing it in front of her.

“A  _ drug _ raid?” she furrowed her brows at the mans head.

The young agent looked up at her curiously, a lock of his dark hair had escaped from his slicked back do. She would have found it endearing if she wasn’t so irritated by his presence at that moment. “Yes, Miss winter. A drug raid. Apparently Russian funded traffickers are operating out of Berlin, a fuck load of cocaine I hear.”

Bell’s lip quirked at his vulgarity, his informality was actually bringing her comfort. She dialled back her cold and pompous attitude as she started to scan the words he had laid out in front of her.

“It’s not really what I do these days you see,” she said in a more forgiving tone, catching him trying to brush the rogue hair back. 

“Yes, well, when I looked into your work a bit more I thought that too,” he said matter-of-factly. “I asked them, why “Miss Winter?” And they said that you’ve worked with the CIA before,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her dramatically. “KGB, BND, CIA... MI6 on the horizon anytime soon?”

She wasn’t amused at the personal line of questioning. The woman pretended to be very occupied with the case file he had handed her all of a sudden, holding it up over her face to block him from her view. 

“I’m just saying, you’ve really got around, I’m impressed,” the man said, obviously trying to smooth over any ruffled feathers. “This will be my first collaborative work.”

Bell wasn’t sure if the man was being serious or not. He could be expertly mocking her, so subtly that she couldn’t say a thing without sounding crazy.There was nothing impressive about being passed around internationally, it was only embarrassing and sad to her. Being dumped in Berlin had heavily bruised her ego and fractured her pride.

“So it’s tomorrow then?”

“Tomorrow night, short notice I know but everything’s planned we just have to show up and do the thing,” the man confirmed quickly nodding, seemingly thankful for the change of topic. “I’ll pick you up and we’ll meet up with them from there.”

“Alright. I suppose that’s fine.”

Roth gave a forced smile and began to gather the mess he had left on her desk. As he was near the doorway he turned to her.

“Any advice on working with the CIA?”

She shrugged slightly. “Maybe just... keep an open mind.”

He looked confused by this, opened his mouth to say something in response but thought better of it. He’d understand soon enough she thought to herself


	2. Back in the saddle

Bell bounced her knee up and down in a frantic rhythm as she sat in the passenger seat of the BND issued vehicle.

“Nervous, Miss winter?” Roth enquired, his eye briefly leaving the road to eye her shaky Jean clad legs.

She stilled herself instantly and crossed her legs to stop the habit taking over again. “It’s been a while since I’ve done anything like this.”

“Right, right,” the man nodded slowly as he turned the corner of a particular sharp dirt road. “Don’t worry, I’ll look after you.”

Bell turned to him in surprise and he sent her a quick wink. The impending danger must have had him feeling more bold. “... thanks.”

“I was thinking Miss winter, you don’t look like you’re cut out for this sort of stuff-“

“Hold on now-“

“You look like you should be tucked away in some rich man’s mansion,” he continued, a smile coming to his face as he caught her creeping blush and startled expression. “Or I don’t know...painting pictures in Paris.”

“ _Painting pictures in Paris_ ,” she repeated in disbelief and confusion, trying to stop the bashful smile coming to her face. “What on earth are you talking about?”

Bell leaned against the window and crossed her arms, he laughed at her juvenile shyness. “All I’m saying is, you’re a very pretty girl,” he said easily, and then sighed in defeat. “...Forgive me, I’m just trying to distract myself, because honestly Miss Winter?”

“Mm?” She said, looking up at him curiously.

“I’m shitting bricks, I’m more of a desk guy myself.”

Bell raised her eyebrows and let out a small sigh through her nose. He was young, she assumed he’d be more on the action side of things. “Looks like it will be me looking after _you_ then.”

“These CIA fellas will be able to smell the fear on me.”

She giggled at this, mostly because he was right. A comfortable silence fell over them as they both watched the road ahead. They had come to a rural part of Berlin, and it was ironically tranquil considering what they were about to face. Bell stuck her head out of the window and stared at the stars until she got dizzy. When she ducked back in, the car stopped and Roth smiled at her grimly. “We’re here.”

He pulled out a cross from around his neck, hidden by the black turtle neck he was wearing. The man held it in his hand, muttering something to himself quickly. Bell wasn’t a religious woman (that she knew of) and she felt like she might be intruding as she stared. 

She opted to pull down the sun visor and look at herself in the mirror. She had opted for a small amount of mascara on her long lashes. Some subtle terracotta blush was dusted across her full cheek bones and complimented her light brown skin, her dark brown curls were pulled back in the braid she usually sported on occasions like this. Checking to see if Roth was watching first, she licked her thumb and brushed her medium thick, straight line eyebrows into place.

“Don’t tell me, one of the Captain Americas is an old flame,” he drawled in a monotone voice as he got out of the car.

“Something like that,” she muttered as she followed suit, slamming the door behind her.He moved round to the trunk of the car and popped it open. Two assault rifles laid there on top of a blanket, glinting under the interior lights. He took one of them and started to ready it for combat. Bell observed him quietly and she felt a wave of worry wash over her. It wasn’t that what he was doing was wrong, but she could always tell who felt natural around this sort of weaponry and who didn’t. He didn’t.

The man noticed her staring and gestured towards the other weapon in the car quickly, probably guessing what she was thinking.

When they both had their weapons ready in hand, they paused to look at each other. A look of understanding was exchanged between both of them.

“You’ll be alright, Roth.”

“Let’s hope so.” 

They carried on across a long grassy field, a few minutes in they spotted three men in the distance walking towards them. Her heart sunk and then raced, making her cheeks hot and her palms prickle against the cold handle of her weapon. _Is it too late to turn back_ , she thought miserably, _I’m not in the right frame of mind for this_. The woman swallowed hard and began to mentally prepare herself as they came closer and closer.

“Is that them, Miss Winter?”

“Oh yes,” she whispered shakily. “I can smell them from here.”

He snorted quietly and she smiled at him, she found herself trying to distract herself just like he had on the car ride up here. It didn’t seem to work with her.

“Are you okay?” He whispered suddenly, looking at her with an alarmed look on his face. “You look...”

“Yes I’m okay,” she breathed back quickly.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes Roth I’m fine, I promise,” she spat out under her breath impatiently.

Roth didn’t seem satisfied however, it was his turn to be concerned about her competence now. “Remember what we’re here for. The fight is with the drug dealers, not the CIA.”

For whatever reason those were the words that made her understand what she was doing. And that was getting flustered over Adler when she was about to be a target for gunfire. _Get a grip, you stupid little girl_ , she warned herself internally. With a deep breath, she nodded at the man. “Thank you Roth,” her appreciation genuine when she said it.

The German man nodded back firmly, his lips pulled into a thin line. “Come on, let’s put on a brave face.”

Their footsteps slowed as the CIA agents in question approached. She recognised Mason and Woods on either side of Adler. She found herself looking past them all, opting to stare at the house they’d be raiding momentarily.

“Roth,” Adler greeted, and she still couldn’t look at him yet. “ _Winter_.”

“Sir,” Roth nodded back and Bell echoed him quietly.“You must be agent Adler?” He asked, this was the first time she had heard him speak English and it was thick with a pure German accent.

Bell pondered why he felt the need to speak English, he must have been informed that Adler was fluent in German. Maybe it was out of respect, she concluded, Roth was the type to jump through hoops to impress a superior.

The American man nodded and vaguely gestured to his right side “Mason,” and then his left “Woods.” He then turned to look at Bell casually. “Since Agent Winter isn’t in the mood to introduce us all right now.”

The young woman cleared her dry throat before looking up at him, sticking her chin in the air. She eyed Mason and Woods briefly, and they looked at her like they hardly even remembered her. “I do apologise Sir, I assumed you grown men were more than capable of saying your own names.”

Bell instantly regretted this choice of words as an uncomfortable atmosphere settled as a result. Faintly she saw Adler’s eyebrow quirk from behind his shades, out the corner of her eye she saw Woods nudge Mason who was giving her a bemused look. “Hello to you too,” Adler retorted lowly, but turned his attention away from their exchange immediately, “You two know the drill?”

“We’re going in loud?” Roth asked, failing to keep the dread out of his voice.

“Loud it is. The place is too heavily occupied for stealth. We’re sweeping the house and locating where they stash the drugs. Look out for unarmed civilians but assume most targets are hostile.”

“Lovely.”

Bell zoned out as she followed the four men towards the large house across the field. It was mildly cold out, but she sweated underneath her dark green, tight fitting turtle neck. She decided the best course of action would be to forget she was in Adler’s presence. As far as she was concerned, he was any old CIA man. Bring distracted by Russell would _not_ be the death of her.

“Bell,” her head shot to the side, the now rare name sharp against her ear. She was surprised to see Adler besides her now, the other three were quite a few paces ahead. “I need you sharp. Get out of your head.”

The woman was stunned for a moment at his sudden intrusive. The fog in her mind subsided and she began to feel numb. And from what she knew of herself, when she felt numb that meant she was ready to head into any sort of danger. With a determined nod, she carried on ahead. _Focus_ , she thought to herself, _we have a job to do._

“Woods, throw a stun through the window,” Adler hissed as they kneeled down behind the two cars outside.

Woods sent a stun grenade into the roomthat had a light on and took point. He led the pack as they briskly made their way into the house, keeping low as they did.

The gun fire was immediate and Bell ducked into a room on her left, throwing herself against the wall next to the door frame. Roth took cover on the opposite side and they made eye contact briefly, she offered him a reassuring smile. She peaked round and saw three hostile men also taking cover. With a breath to steady the pounding in her chest, Bell started shooting rounds, managing to hit two men in the head before she had to stop to reload.

“Move up, Roth,” she said urgently, readying her weapon to shoot again.

The man nodded, he moved to the next room and tipped over a nearby table to crouch behind. She joined his side just as he took out a couple of active shooters who had come down the stairs. “The place is crawling,” he hissed as he started to reload frantically.

Bell glanced through the door way to the side of her to see Adler, Mason and Woods making their way through the other side of the house. The Gunshots and angry shouts grew further and further away.

“Come on let’s check upstairs,” she breathed, getting up and moving towards the hallway.

The two held their weapons high as they stormed through the house, rotating as they walked in order to scan every inch of the large scale building. Bell gave him a quick, serious look. “Watch for civilians in the bedrooms.”

The woman started up the stairs quickly and felt a sickly feeling as all 5 doors surrounding her were closed. “Shall we split up?” Roth whispered.

She was surprised how quickly he seemed to latch onto her for guidance. It certainly wasn’t something she was use to. “No,” she said definitively. “Let’s stick together, alright?”

The German man nodded hastily, she saw the Adam’s apple move aggressively in his throat and hoped with all her heart he could keep his cool. She heard Woods shout something downstairs and decided not to be distracted by it, those three would be fine. “Ready?” She whispered.

“Yes.”

The woman slowly twisted the door knob to the door nearest to them, and registered that the room was dark. She bit down hard on her lip as she scanned the small room, she waved Roth towards the en-suite bathroom.

He came out a few seconds later shaking his head and they moved towards the door. Just as they were about to leave, Bell caught the tiniest hint of movement in her peripheral vision.

She stormed towards the curtain and flung it back. A gasp escaped her as the person threw himself at her, his furious screams matching the picture of pure rage on his face. He cracked a pistol across her forehead and grabbed her by the throat while she was stunned. The weapon she had in her hands fell at her feet. Still dazed by the impact, she went into autopilot. Adrenaline pumped through her entire body as she unsheathed the knife that was strapped to her thigh. She stuck it into the hostile’s neck unyieldingly, and then shanked him a couple more times quickly for good measure. A sickening gurgle followed from the man as she snatched the blade back. 

She watched with a pant as he slumped to the floor, his body suddenly inanimate. The blood gushed underneath him and the unmistakable smell filled her nostrils.

“Not my best work,” she croaked as she picked up her gun, turning to Roth who had now paled at what he had just witnessed.

“Christ, Winter,” he breathed.

“I’d say,” she whispered back, giving him an incredulous look. “Come on, keep it together.”

The pair encountered a few other hostiles as they looked through the rooms, managing to finish them off quickly without anymore close calls.

“Upstairs clear,” Roth called down the stairs when they were both certain it was.

When no response came he looked at Bell questioningly. She peered down below with growing concern herself. Her shoulders dropped in relief when the three men slowly came to stand at the bottom.

“Way more than we thought,” Mason called up to them, sounding almost out of breath.

Bell leaned against the bannister tiredly, massaging her now sore neck and trailing up to the forming bump on her head. “Found the drugs?” She said, cringing at how her voice still sounded dry and broken.

“Oh,” Woods began with a smirk. “We found it alright, fuck me did we find it.”

“More Coke than we thought as well,” Mason clarified. “Not sure how you BND people didn’t notice this operation for so long.”

Bell glanced at Roth, as she suspected he looked irritated by the insinuation from the American man. He was prideful of the BND, she had gotten that impression from their first conversation. She made a show of shaking her head and rolling her eyes discretely in solidarity with the German man.

“Any civilians up there?” Adler asked as the two came down the stairs with their weapons lowered. They stood in the hallway opposite Adler. Woods and Masons walked away into the other rooms, presumably to start wrapping things up.

“All hostiles, all dead,” Bell reassured.

“No trouble at all,” Roth added, not even looking at the man as his eyes lingered on the bruises curling up through the neck of Bell’s sweater.

“Glad to hear it.”The CIA man stared at the two for a moment, Roth shifted uncomfortably and Bell looked down at her weapon. “Nice work,” he finished finally.

“Thank you, sir,” the German man muttered. “Are we done or do you need help with clean up?”

“You’re free to leave, we’ve got it from here.”

“And what will you and your people be doing with that coke?”

Bell glanced at Roth in surprise, her eyes moving between him and Adler quickly. It wasn’t just the question, but the look of knowing disapproval on Roth’s face. 

The shades made it impossible to tell what Adler’s reaction was to this. Instead it was the way he started to light a cigarette that suggested he had no intention of taking the younger man seriously. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you had some reservations about the CIA, Agent Roth.”

Bell waited in anticipation for her fellow BND agent to respond, she was rather disappointed when he retreated with a shake of his head. “No. I’m sure you’ll dispose of it appropriately.” Of course, he and her weren’t here to keep tabs on CIA activity, Roth must have remembered that.

“Mmhm,” Adler hummed, taking a quick hit of his cigarette. “I do need a quick word with Agent Winter actually, before you head off.”

Roth looked as if he wanted to protest. Bell patted his arm and leaned in to whisper to him for reassurance. “You should go start the car, this really won’t take long.” 


	3. Mail

Bell and Adler stood in the hallway of the home they had just been using as a war zone. It was surprisingly cozy given the circumstances, the lamps that hadn’t been caught in crossfire lit the place in a soft, honey coloured glow. Bell glanced at the framed photos of smiling people, _children_ even.

“The traffickers seized this home from a family,” Adler broke the silence first, letting the smoke from his cigarette flow from his mouth. Reading her thoughts and answering her questions without her even having to ask them was a habit of his. Sometimes it was infuriating, other times helpful, occasionally it was comforting.

He was leaning against the white wall, facing her. Currently he was clad in a black boomer jacket and dark jeans. The shades hadn’t changed, neither had the hair. Her eyes scanned over him, lingering on his scars, jawline and lips.   


Any hope she had of her attraction fading for him over time was dashed away tonight. While being away from him, she unrelentingly tried to convince herself he wasn’t as attractive as she recalled him to be. If love wasn’t completely blind it certainly did give you rose tinted glasses, she had concluded.

Her stomach twisted in knots at the realisation that, if anything, he looked even better than she remembered.

Bell allowed herself to indulge for a few more moments before she ripped her gaze away, because he was probably watching her watching _him_ behind those shades of his.

 _I’d love to snap them in two,_ was what crossed her mind darkly.

“How sad,” she finally said softly. “It’s a beautiful house.”

Ironically he stubbed out his cigarette into the pristine wall as she said that. “Maybe they’ll get it back one day, who knows.”

Bell looked past him and noticed Woods and Mason carrying palettes of white parcels into the yard. More specifically, white powder wrapped in cellophane. It crossed her mind to ask him what the CIA would really do with all of that, now Roth had scurried off with his tail between his legs. She decided Adler probably wouldn’t entertain the idea of being honest about it anyway.

Her eyes switched back to him. “So... what did you need to talk about?”

“I wanted to see how you were, obviously.”

“I’m fine,” she said moodily, giving him a quick begrudging look from beneath her thick lashes.

“What was that all about back there?”

“Back where?”

“Back _there_ ,” he persisted firmly, not interested in her clueless act. “I mean sure, I wasn’t expecting you to jump into my arms, but Christ,” he let out a little chuckle, “If I knew you’d be that unhappy to see me I would have requested someone else.”

Bell narrowed her eyes as she comprehended what he had just said. “You requested me? I just thought I had been assigned...”

“I needed someone I could rely on for the job. You’re the most capable out of all of them. I mean even boy wonder who tagged along with you,” he shook his head in distaste. “the BND doesn’t have a chance in hell.”

She felt guilt as she thought of all the dedication and enthusiasm Roth had for the job. In the end that meant nothing. He’d still be berated by men like Russell Adler for not meeting their astonishingly high expectations. Bell had to wonder how she herself seemed to live up to them.

“I’m sorry you don’t approve,” Bell snapped. “But you chose this for me.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Granted. But still, what was wrong with you earlier?”

Bell sighed, running her gloved finger over one of the intact elephant ornaments on a table besides her. He wouldn’t let it go until he got an answer, she was sure they’d be here until the early hours of the morning if she didn’t tell him the truth.

“I was a bit nervous seeing you again,” she said quietly, tracing the elephants trunk up to the tip.

He hummed slightly in response. “Understandable.”

The pair stood in silence again before she pulled her hand away from the ornament with a huff. Pretending not to be angry was becoming more and more tricky with every second she spent in the mans presence. “You must have been in Berlin for like...at least two months now, why haven’t you contacted me?”

“Why would I contact you?”

That was the last straw for the woman, when she felt her face burn with embarrassment she knew it was time to get away from him while her dignity was intact. “Alright, I’m leaving.”

“Kid, wait-“

She ignored him as she pushed her way out of the door, she got as far as the front porch before his hand clasped around her upper arm. “Hold on, Bell.”

“Agent Roth is waiting for me,” she said snatching her arm away angrily, her voice wavering against her will. It was then she realised just how much her neck was injured. It made itself known with a sharp sting in her throat, as if to punish her for ignoring it. Bell grimaced and raised a hand to it subconsciously.

“You’re hurt,” he said, his hand reaching up to her neck slowly. She raised her chin away from him but didn’t pull back as he peeled down the collar of her turtleneck carefully. Adler would tend to her wounds and injuries during their days working together. That must have been why this felt so natural to her.

His gently ran his gloved fingers up the length of the purple hand prints on her neck. The heat his touch left on her skin was enough to make her brush him off. “It’s fine, don’t make a fuss.”

The man followed her as she began to stalk off again. She had forgotten how far the car was parked from this place. Adler wandered along besides her like they had mutually decided to go for a nightly stroll. Meanwhile her short legs traipsed through the long grass awkwardly. “What did I say to you the day I left, Bell?”

“You said a lot of things, maybe you should be more specific.”

Adler didn’t entertain that. “Think about it.”

As her boot snagged on something beneath the grass she sighed, ripping it away and taking a huge step to evade the object. “You said I need to learn to live without you...” she muttered.

“And you have. Because I left you alone, because I haven’t been getting in touch with you.”

“How do you know?” She looked across to him with what she thought was her meanest glare, but usually it just translated into a petulant pout.

Adler was silent now and this made her stop and turn to him. When she glanced into the distance, she could vaguely see Roth watching them from the car. “How do you know I’ve been fine?” She said again lowly.

She already knew she wouldn’t like what she would be told next. Adler placed a hand up as a calming gesture, suspecting she was about to erupt. “I call in with your commanding officer every few months-“

Bells eyes widened at this, her mouth fell open involuntarily. “That’s- you can’t just-“

“Just to check if everything’s going well-“ Adler tried to keep the tone of his voice calming and level, but it was futile.

“Adler, that isn’t fair!” the woman raised her voice over him. He tried to place a hand on her but she backed away from him with a small whine in protest.

In the end she sighed in defeat, dismay replaced the fierce anger and left her chest feeling heavy. “Why are you like this?”

The woman felt his eyes on her as she stared at the ground, she watched his boots move closer to her. “I’m just looking out for you, Bell.”

Bell shook her head quickly and backed away from him. “You don’t care about me,” she told him, chewing on her lips as she felt her eyes grow damp. “You’re keeping an eye on me to make sure I’m not planning something against you and your side-“

“No-“

“And you calling me here to do that,” she gestured widely towards the house behind them, “making me work for you again, this is just you testing my loyalties.”

He placed his hand on her shoulders and her eyes flitted across to the car again, Roth would have a full display of this. Bell started to wondered how she would explain this whole exchange between her and the American agent, but then Adler began to talk. “I wanted to make sure you were safe, a large part of that is making sure you’re not doing anything to piss off the CIA. But I already know you’re not stupid enough to do that. I just needed to know you were okay.”

He squeezed down on her shoulders when she shook her head in denial again. “I didn’t contact you directly because I know what that would do to you.”

“You know what you do to me...?” Bell whispered, so quietly it was more to herself. She freed herself from his grip. “So you need to know if I’m _okay_ , but you can’t just ask me? You have to ask the men above me?” 

Adler didn’t respond then. He was satisfied she understood, even if she was clearly upset about it. Neither of them spoke for a small moment, the sound of crickets sounded piercingly through the quiet as they stared at each other.

Bell broke first. “I will never be okay, Adler. So you can stop checking.”

As she started off towards the car again she couldn’t resist the urge to glance over her shoulder. He was still planted firm in the same spot, just watching her leave. A frustrating part of her was disappointed he hadn’t tried to stop her again.

As she sat down in the car, she avoided Roth’s gaze like the plague. “What was that?” He said quietly, and she bristled at the subtle disgust in his voice.

“Let’s just go,” her voice cracked as she stifled a sob. The look on the young woman’s face was enough to make Roth leave her be and start the journey back.

-

Bell sat down at her desk the next morning exhausted. She had forgotten the turmoil combat could take on her body, she was sore all over. And then there was her neck, seeing the vibrant bruises on her skin made her blood run cold. The handy work of a man that had been dead for hours... Perhaps she shouldn’t think about it too hard.

As she started on her morning paperwork, something unfamiliar caught her attention, it laid in one of her trays. WINTER was written across a large brown envelope in block capitals.

She hummed in wonder as she opened it. Her mouth opened slightly as she pulled out a very thick folded up piece of paper. Bell smoothed it out onto her desk eagerly, her brows furrowed in confusion. She quickly recognised it to be a map of Berlin.

Red marker circled a location at the end of what appeared to be a long road on the outskirts of the city. She ran her fingers over the markings until she noticed the bottom right corner. Written in the same red marker was:

_Bell, if you ever need anything_

She mouthed the words to herself as she read them, her heart beating faster as she did.

Her head shot up as a sharp knock on the door broke the silence in the office. The door was always left open, so Roth had only knocked out of courtesy. He was in the room already.

Bell scrambled to fold up the map, making a mess of it as she did. It ended up being shoved in one of her drawers in a jumbled heap. She turned her attention to the man with a tight smile. Truth be told, she was annoyed at the intrusion.

“Good morning, Miss winter, I’ve been told to let you know,” he said, sitting down opposite her just like he had yesterday. “We have a debriefing at 10.”

Bell nodded simply, not being too concerned with that news. “How are you?” She asked.

Roth didn’t seem to be in much better shape than her, in addition to that he didn’t have makeup to cover his tiredness like she did. “I’m alright,” he said in a way that sounded like he wasn’t completely alright, but didn’t want to talk about it. She respected that.

“How’s the neck?” He asked in return. “And head.”

“Just bruised,” she said in a similar tone to him, raising her hand to the curls that framed her face to make sure they covered the mark on her forehead.

He nodded in understanding, but he looked as if he was holding something back. There was something he wanted to ask. Bell quickly remembered what Roth had witnessed between her and Adler that night, no wonder he was looking at her so strangely. She just hoped he wasn’t a gossip.

“I’m sorry about all of that last night,” the woman felt obligated to say.   
  


“It’s okay,” he returned, looking into her eyes. “But you just looked so... distressed?”

Bell was surprised by his genuine concern, she didn’t even detect a hint of morbid curiosity. It would have been touching if it weren’t such an inconvenience to have him prying. 

“It’s really nothing to worry about,” she reassured, taking a gentle tone to help smooth things over. “I was on edge after that attack anyway, and Mr Adler knows how to push my buttons unfortunately.”

Roth nodded, but she could tell from his eyes he wasn’t buying her completely. He had seen something he wasn’t suppose to see, there was no reversing it now.

“Well,” he said, his tone more light hearted now, “I personally wouldn’t be too disheartened if I never saw those three ever again.”

She wished she could bring herself to agree.

-

Bell reached her apartment that night feeling conquered. The debriefing, numerous other meetings and the mind numbing cryptography work she was faced with made her already aching head swim.

“Hello cutie,” she cooed as her fluffy white cat came stalking down the hall way. Bell smiled tiredly as she picked the creature up and buried her face in his silky soft fur. Predictably, he didn’t let her do so for long before he wriggled out of her grasp and jumped to the floor.

She hummed as she began to take her coat off and placed her keys in their usual keeping place. Her attention flickered to the pile of envelopes on the floor that had been posted through her letter box, she couldn’t be bothered to pick it up this morning when it first came. Admittedly, she debated whether to pick it up even now. The looming presence of bills resulted in a slight aversion to mail.

With a sigh she bent down and picked it all up. She slapped it down onto the table and resorted to looking through it tomorrow morning. But then something caught her eye. It was a flash of red among the white envelopes.

With a frown she pulled a red envelope from the pile and tilted her head at it curiously. _Anna_ was written on the front of it in loopy handwriting.

_Anna?_

She raised a shaky hand up to her mouth. All she knew was that was her name, her _real name_ from her other life. No one called her that, she couldn’t even _remember_ the times where people would call her that.

And there were only a very select few people who knew this particular name.

Adler again, it must be, or Park? she thought to herself as her heart began to pound in her ears. _But why would they be calling me Anna... they’ve never called me Anna._

Bell already knew the answer deep down, this wasn’t from Adler or Park at all. It didn’t matter how much she willed it to be.

She clenched the envelope in her fist as her lips started to wobble. It crossed her mind to dispose of it and escape into the respite of sleep for the night. No. That wasn’t an option, not for someone under her circumstances.

The woman braced herself against the table when she had taken the letter out of the envelope. She instantly recognised the distinct written language that was Russian against the stark white paper.  
  


Bell felt dizzy as she started to read the words.

_It is never too late to make amends or start again. I refuse to believe you understand what you are doing. Please, let me see you once more and we can fix this awful business._

_Perseus_

__


	4. Safe house

Bell stepped out of her up small navy blue car. Pulling her long red winter coat to her small frame as the chilly breeze hit, she looked up at the house in front of her. Her big, brown eyes shot up to the upstairs window when the curtain twitched.

Her heeled knee high boots clicked along the path as she made her way to the door. She didn’t need to knock, she was sure he was coming.

The door opened and there he was in front of her. Bell eyed him briefly, he was dressed in a black sweater and jeans. What caught her off guard was the lack of sunglasses. For once, she was free to see his piercing eyes staring down at her. It certainly didn’t help with her nerves. 

“Sorry, I know it’s late,” Bell said, finding her voice to be smaller than usual. She slipped her hands in her pocket and gripped onto the inside linings tightly. 

Adler regarded the anxious expression on Bell’s face and stepped aside, gesturing for her to walk through the door. 

The woman walked into the house and looked around, curious at her new surroundings.

The front room was archaic looking and caked in dust. It was complete with two old corduroy sofas, a heavily stained coffee table and a worn away rug. She glanced across to the open plan kitchen which was illuminated by painfully bright industrial lights. There was a dining table scattered with paper, photographs, an ash tray and a couple of coffee mug, she assumed this was where Adler currently conducted his work.

“Are you living here?” She asked sceptically as she looked around the room.

“I work here, It’s the new safe house.” Bell felt him lay his fingers on her upper back gingerly. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

The girl turned to face him. He waited as she stood there rather uselessly, trying to find the words to speak.

“I just need you to know...” she began and he hummed in response, his gentle impatience becoming evident. “I haven’t done anything wrong-“

“We’ve been through this, Bell. I would know if you were doing anything you shouldn’t be,” a small hint of warning in his voice. Adler clearly wasn’t pleased with where this was going already. Bell wondered again if coming to him about this was the best idea, but she had tried to think of the alternatives and came up blank.

With this in mind she reached into her pocket and took out the red envelope, handing it to him wordlessly. She practically squirmed as he opened it and took out the white paper inside. His long fingers were careful and slow. Probably from decades of dealing with old, decaying documents. The mans face was definitively blank, even when he instantly saw it was written in Russian. She was still impressed the American could read the language so well.

“Where and when did you receive this?”

Bell took a deep breath before replying. “It was delivered to my apartment this morning, through the post,” she told him, “but I only opened it around an hour ago.”

He nodded, she daren’t take her eyes off him as his jaw tightened and his eyes grew dark with restrained anger. “How would Perseus know your home address?”

“I don’t know,” Bell responded, dejectedly, “I really don’t know. One of his people might have found me, started following me maybe.”

“And you wouldn’t notice that, Bell?”

She quickly shook her head, more to say “I don’t know” rather than “no”. His icy expression didn’t falter.

The woman knew ahead of time it wouldn’t be received well. She decided she may as well get it all out in the open now. 

The woman swallowed and looked down at her black boots as she built the courage to say what she would next. “I was thinking if I take him up on this offer to meet again... if I could just talk to him...just for a few minutes, he could help me remember who I was-“

Suddenly Adler had his big, strong hands over her thin upper arms. She gasped as he physically moved her and sat her down on the sofa in front of them. It had all happened so fast her brain couldn’t register what had just happened quick enough. Dazed and frozen in place, she watched as the man leaned down so he was level with her.

“You listen to me kid,” he said sternly, giving her a small shake as he did. “And you listen good. If that man ever gets his hands on you again, he will kill you. He will.”

Her gaze drifted down to the letter on the table and he followed her gaze. “That’s a lure, Bell. I know you’re smart enough to understand that.”

The woman’s eyes began to grow hot with tears, she let out a little sniff making him sigh and pull away from her immediately. He roughly ran a hand through his hair in raw frustration. “I keep putting everything on the line for you and you still...”

Bell felt a flash of rage in that moment. The nerve of him, she thought. It was the way he looked so uncharacteristically exhausted, all because of her. Was she really that great of a burden? “Nothing is stopping you from washing your hands of me, Adler,” she snapped bitterly.

“Yeah,” he began quietly, going back to his stoic manner. “I thought that too for a while, but clearly I give you too much credit,” she watched him sit down opposite her and light another damned cigarette.   
  
He continued after his first puff. “Tell me how I’m supposed to let you out of my sight when shit like this goes through your head, _still_. Really Bell? You think you can go and just... what? Catch up with this man over coffee or something?”  


Bell racked her brain for an adequate response, but decided right now she was better off letting him get it out of his system. 

“You’re a danger to yourself. This is exactly what we-“ he stopped himself with a sigh, “What _I_ was afraid of.”

Those words made it click. When he put it like that she realised, just her mere suggestion had damaged his trust in her tenfold. She had proven his worse fears true. The woman began to kick herself mentally. _Should have just gave him the stupid letter and left it, why do I bother to even open my mouth._

“You said I could come to you with anything,” she said miserably, barely above a whisper.

“Good job I said that,” the man said, staring at the floor in seemingly deep thought as he periodically raised his cigarette to his mouth and then back down again.

Bell hated how tense his body looked. The defeated look in his steely, war hardened eyes was enough to make her feel guilty. She could never read him completely, but one thing she could see was disappointment. And it seemed like that disappointment was more in himself than her. It was usually a matter of him not blaming her for things, but blaming himself instead for letting her do it in the first place.

“I never would have done anything without asking you first,” she said softly, trying to meet his eyes but he avoided her gaze expertly. “I was thinking you could use this to get him.”

He nodded in acknowledgment. The sound of him blowing out smoke was starting to unnerve her, the small open and close of his lips and a long breath on repeat. “So we just use you as bait then? Is that what you had in mind?”

“Why not? Am I not just here to help catch him anyway?” she said, hating how how self pitiful she sounded. “You’d get Perseus, and if he does want to kill me-“

“He does.”

“I’m sure I could get him to tell me about myself first. And then at least...” she hesitated, wondering if she should say what she was thinking next. “I’d die knowing the truth.”

Adler stared at her intently now, not taking his eyes off her even as he paused to inhale his next round of nicotine. “Is that really how you feel? You never struck me as the martyr type...And I like that about you, your self preservation.”

Bell wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she didn’t. He took the initiative to lead the conversation in a different direction. “Don’t sacrifice yourself, Bell. Once Perseus is done you could have a normal life.”

She stopped herself from throwing out a bitter laugh, instead she let a puff of air through her nose and gave him a bittersweet smile. “Funny.”

“You’re still young. You have it all ahead of you.”

“I don’t even know how old I am,” she whispered more to herself but then looked up at him unwaveringly. Her doe like eyes weren’tcapable of being intimidating, but they did always convey everything she was feeling. “Can you really blame me for wanting to know who I am?”

“No, I just need you to be rational. That’s all I ask, Bell. It’s not much.”

 _All you ask?_ she thought sourly, she bit her tongue. “So what are you going to do then?” The girl asked, leaning back on the old dusty sofa, trying not to think of the marks it could be leaving on her expensive coat.

“I’ll have to let the rest of the team know. I guess we’ll figure it out from there. Do you mind if I keep hold of this for now?” He asked, picking up the letter and looking at it again.

“It’s yours, Adler. I brought it here for you.”

Adler nodded, placing the letter back down. “Thank you, Bell. I appreciate it.”

He stood now, she watched him as he walked over to the table in the kitchen and picked up a phone. “Don’t go anywhere yet,” the man said to her almost as an after thought as he started to dial out a number, he knew he didn’t have to tell her.

“Sims, yeah I know, Yeah I know I know listen, I need you and Park here first thing in the morning... No it can’t wait until Wednesday anymore. Somethings happened.”

Bell let herself drift in and out of his conversation as she felt her eyes go hazy. “Yeah, delivered straight to her address... I have her here with me...” She could see out of the corner of her eye that he was looking straight at her now. “Well it’s either that or some sort of witness protection program...”

These words made her perk up and actively pay attention to him. She really hadn’t thought this through after all, she had just panicked and run to Adler impulsively. Of course he wasn’t going to let her go home now, she was _compromised_.

It was times like this that Bell seriously doubted this so called intelligence she was apparently blessed with. But who was she kidding, there was no other option but to tell Adler. Her being a free woman was a facade, not even a good one. 

After the man said his goodbyes on the phone, he stood and stared into space for a small moment. She saw him muffle a yawn. Under the bright kitchen lights, she could see he really did look tired. It wasn’t often she got to see him anything other than his razor sharp self. He’d been working too hard already, she concluded, her situation was probably just cherry on top.

“Okay kid,” he said finally, making his way back to where she was. He sat close and turned his body towards her. She tried her best to ignore how close their knees were, looking up at him apprehensively. “It’s not safe for you to go home now, not if Perseus and god knows who else knows your address.”

“Please not witness protection, anything but that.” Bell shuddered at the thought of being locked up, waited on and looked after by some lackeys at the CIA, she could think of few things more embarrassing.   
  
“Well you’ll have to stay here then.”

Bell buried her head in her hands tiredly with a small groan. “And who will be watching me?” She said from behind her fingers. 

“Who do you think?” He quipped, patting her arm as he stood up. “Come on, I’ll take you to go and pack.”

-

Bell exaggeratively grimaced when she turned the lights on in what would be her new room, located on the second floor of the house. Adler smirked at her behind her back. He never would have thought Bell would have turned out to be so prissy and high maintenance.

He had been take aback when he went to her apartment with her while she packed her belongings. What he was confronted with was perfumey scents everywhere, pink velvet sofas and white fluffy rugs, vases of flowers in every room....

And then there was the expensive clothes, the perfect curls, the pristine makeup. He concluded this must have been closer to who she was in Russia, somehow fragments of her previous characteristics and personality were coming back naturally.

“And You’re absolutely sure there’s no other option for me?” She asked, looking over her shoulder at him

“It’s not that bad, you can give it a clean...”

“Oh I can, can I?” She turned to look at him incredulously and he merely shrugged in response.

“I know it’s not ideal for you,” he said, eyeing up the stain on the mattress, “But your safety is the main priority right now, not your comfort.”

Bell crouched down to look under the bed. “Me not being captured and interrogated is the priority,” she muttered under her breath.

He caught it, and decided to indulge this. “I really don’t want to see you killed, Bell.”

“And I don’t want to be killed,” the young woman said, opening the closet next to the bed now, running her gloved finger over the dusty mirror inside. “So I suppose I’ll have to make do.”

“You’ve slept in far worse places than this,” Adler pointed out.

Bell’s eyes flickered in recognition at this, a sad ghost of her smile coming to her face. “So you’ll be staying here too?”

He nodded. “I’m in the room across from you.”

Bell pressed her lips together as she considered this and found herself overwhelmed with the bizarreness of the situation. It hadn’t quite sunk in yet.

“If you want, I can see if Park will stay here instead,” he said upon seeing the look on her face.

She wiped her bewildered expression away and shook her head nonchalantly. “It doesn’t make a difference to me which one of you babysits me.”

Adler slowly walked over to the bed, sitting down on the mattress in front of her casually. “I’m glad you said that. So you won’t mind if I get Hudson down here then? I just think he’s best equipped for this.”

Bell’s eyes widened, her mouth agape as she was about to protest. She reeled it in when she saw the wry look on his face, fighting an amused smile herself. Sometimes her gullibility was too easy of a target, she could admit it.

He left her to her own devices shortly after that. When she heard him close his room door she finally felt alone.

After she made her bed, she stripped down to her panties. The cold air of the house hit her body harshly. As she slipped into bed, she found herself unable to slip off to sleep. She found her mind constantly drift to the room across from her. 


	5. Eavesdrop

She woke up the next morning when she heard the unmistakeable sound of the front door opening and multiple footsteps fall through. With a small moan she recalled yesterday night, when Adler had told Park and Sims to be here ‘first thing’. Could it not be the third or fourth thing, she thought to herself grouchily.

Judging from the colour of the sky she could see from the crack in the curtains, and the birds of Berlin singing their tiny lungs out, it must have been quite early in the morning.

“Adler,” she heard a distinct male voice sound through the house.

_Hudson_ was what went through her mind as she recognised the voice instantly. The woman was sure that hadn’t been mentioned yesterday.

She got out of bed gingerly and wrapped her nearby robe around her body. The woman slowly edged towards the doorway in an attempt to hear better. It was no easy task moving quietly with floorboards like these.

“Is  _she_ here?” She heard him say, there was a distinct disgust evident in his voice. The girl felt her cheeks flush in shame.

“She is,” Adler reassured. “She’s sleeping still.”

“Good. Keep her where you can see her,” he said in his short clipped voice, but more hushed now.

She heard them start to move out of the hall and further into the house.

“When did she receive this letter?” the distinct voice of Helen Park sounded now.

“Yesterday, as soon as she received it she came to me.”

“You sure we’re not just overreacting,” she identified this to be Sims voice. “What did it say?”

“It says he wants to meet with her.”

They seemed to all fall silent for a moment, Adler’s words clearly holding enough gravitas to make them stop and think.

“Is she going to fall for that, do you think?” Sims asked again.

“Believe it or not, I can’t read her mind. But she’s far from stupid...” Adler told them. “What she is, is desperate for the truth.”

The young woman felt a pang of betrayal as he told them this. She made a note to herself, she really should stop spilling her feelings in front of of him haphazardly. Her moments of weakness were taken more seriously than she hoped.

“Truth about what?” Hudson spat, not liking the sound of that revelation.

“The truth about who she is, what else?”

She heard Hudson sigh impatiently, the way he saw her as a profound inconvenience was evident. “And that could make her act out, do something stupid?”

“She knows that going to Perseus head on is suicide.”

“But is it?” Park asked now, she was met with silence after which prompted her to continue. “Bell is an extremely valuable asset to anyone now. Might I remind you all, she knows top secret information about the CIA  and Perseus. Let’s face it, the fact that she knows MI6 get involved with this business at all is something as well. And now she’s working for the bloody BND.” Park paused before speaking again, her voice lower. “She’s not your run of the mill defective, is what I’m saying.”

Sims piped up this time. “So, we have to think about just how disposable she is to anyone at this point.”

She found herself waiting impatiently for Adler to speak again, but he seemed to stay silent as the other three discussed her.

Finally, she heard his voice again, a clear-cut commanding presence in the room. “Bell knows, and we all know,” Adler began firmly, and she felt hopeful at him saying Bell instead of ‘ _she_ ’, “that yes Perseus will interrogate her for information, but he would only kill her in the end.”

“How are you so sure he won’t welcome her back with open arms?” Hudson challenged.

“He must know she gave him up, that’s unforgivable. What’s more, if he were to welcome her back into the organisation, the risk of her becoming a double agent and relaying information back to us is too great. This man is no amateur.”

Thick silence filled the room after that and she wondered if the conversation was done with. She was about to get up off the floor, but then someone spoke again.

“Well, it’s risky for us to trust what is essentially an involuntary defective too, but here we are, still doing it,” Hudson retorted.

“What she did in the end was voluntary,” Sims pointed out quietly. 

Hudson seemingly didn’t respond to this, leading to a drop in the conversation again. Bell imagined them all to be sat their awkwardly, wringing their hands and avoiding each other’s eyes. 

“We have to think about what’s in it for Bell if she were to see Perseus again,” Park said finally. “She is an... emotional type of woman, seemingly very compassionate to the people around her yes, but quite self involved too.”

Bell furrowed her brows at these words.  _Self involved _?

“And she’s young which means impulsive,” Hudson added. “Definitely not in her fucking 30s. That’s a joke if I ever heard one. I don’t even know how you convinced her of that.”

“She wasn’t in the frame of mind to question anything back then,” Adler snapped.

“But Christ, did she not ever look in the mirror and think something was off?”

At that moment she decided she had heard enough. The conversation was somewhat interesting in her mind, but they weren’t saying anything that was new to her.  They sure do have a lot to say to me , she thought with bitter resentment.

Bell got dressed into a black pencil skirt combined with some black tights. She opted for a silky white dress shirt and threw on a loose black sweater over the top to protect from the chill.

She steeled herself as she walked down the stairs. Social anxiety gripped her chest possessively and made her head swim. Maybe eavesdropping wasn’t good for her, ignorance really is bliss, she decided

“Bell,” she was first met by Park’s amiablesmiling face as she entered the room the four were sat in. “Nice to see you.”

Sims echoed her hello with a small short wave, Hudson offered a mere grunt and nod in her direction.

“Talk of the devil,” Sims said as she sat near Adler on the sofa, opposite to the one him and Park occupied. Hudson stood with his arms crossed, signalling that he wasn’t about to relax or stay for long either.

“Nice things I hope,” she smiled at him and then darted her eyes across to Adler, looking up into the lenses of his shades.

“Adler’s told us about Perseus reaching out,” Park said, Bell was grateful for her no nonsense approach. “How are you feeling about it all?”

Bell took a few seconds to plan out her answer. She knew it didn’t hurt to overemphasise her innocent exterior, especially in times like this.

“In all honestly, I’m quite frightened,” Bell said softly, playing up her girlish voice to sound sweeter and bringing a saddened expression to her face. 

“I’m sure,” Park gave her a sympathetic look. “But don’t worry, you’re in good hands.”

Hudson made a small noise with his throat to bring attention to himself. “But I think the most important question is... are you considering is offer?”

Bell shot her head up at Hudson, she really wasn’t expecting this direct line of questioning so suddenly. Neither did the other three in the room, judging from the way they stared at him too. “No sir,” she said in the most polite tone she could muster. “The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

She felt Adler’s eyes on her as she told the lie. It crossed her mind that he might have something to say about it, but in the end he nodded in confirmation. “Like I said Hudson,” Adler started, “Bell knows making contact with Perseus would be a very,  _very_ stupid idea. She’d be foolish to even consider it for a second.”

He was addressing her indirectly now. She told herself not to rise to it and angled her body away from him slightly, making an active effort to not let the irritation show on her face.

Hudson stared at the two of them for a moment, the sunglasses blocking any conveyance of emotion or thought he might have had. “Glad to hear it,” he finally said, “Adler, a word before I go?”

The man in question stood from his chair and made his way outside with Hudson, leaving Bell, Park and Sims alone in the room.

The younger agent had no desire to make small talk, so she looked down at her lap and picked at the ladder in her stockings instead.

“So,” Park said pointedly, her melodic voice breaking the silence in the room sharply. “What sort of work are you doing with the BND these days?”

It took Bell a moment to process that the woman was actually expecting a response from her, she sat up straighter and crossed her leg over the rip in her stockings. “Mostly just decryption and analytic work.”

Park nodded as if she were genuinely interested. “Yes, I always got the sense that combat wasn’t your preferred area of the job, not to say you weren’t perfectly capable of it.”

The younger woman smiled up at Park carefully. Begrudgingly, the familiarity of her soothing presence was making her feel comforted. 

Park’s charisma was a contrast to Adler’s. It didn’t have the same complexity to it, she was quite simply outwardly likeable. Her charm was suffocatingly easy to succumb to and frustratingly hard to shake off.

Bell had been hooked back in her days of CIA brain control illusions. While she struggled with a hybrid of excitement and nervousness to see Adler everyday, with Park she had felt a genuine warm joy. 

Still, the British woman’s mock friendship was just a contributing factor to the bond Bell had felt so wholly.

Park had made the decision to implant memories of being an ex-MI6 agent into the girl’s head. So why wouldn’t they have been firm friends? They were one in the same, in a foreign country, surrounded by often disagreeable middle age men. In retrospect, Bell forgave herself for not ever seeing something amiss. Park and Adler’s mental and emotional warfare was sophisticatedly effective.

It just disturbed Bell how she still hadn’t succeeded in dissolving the fragments of the British accent that she inherited from Park during the brain washing. It was still mixed in with her baseline Russian accent like a lingual cocktail. She’d never even been to the U.K, it was just _embarrassing._ Nonetheless _,_ it was a light hearted side effect when put into perspective of how bleak _MK ultra_ actually was.

Ending her reminiscing session, she noticed Sims seemed to fidget slightly as if he had something to say. Bell directed her attention towards him and smiled at him expectantly. “I never got the chance to say it... but thanks for everything you did.”

“Oh,” she said, her eyebrows lifting in surprise. “You shouldn’t thank me. I’m just glad I made the right choice... in the end...” she trailed off. 

To her great relief Adler came back in that moment, sinking back down next to her.

“He okay, Doc?” Sims asked.

“He’s great,” Adler retorted shortly, Bell knew that was his way of saying ‘don’t concern yourself’.

“It’s nice he seems to have much more trust in me now,” Bell said, keeping the sarcasm in her voice too subtle to detect.

She faintly saw him squint his eyes at her from behind his shades.“Mmhmm,” he finally hummed under his breath.

“When it comes to the letter,” Adler said in a louder tone, addressing all three of them.“There’s not much we can do for now. We keep Bell safe, we carry on following leads. I think we can all agree that since she’s gonna be with us anyway, she may as well put her skills to good use with us. How does that sound, Bell?”

“Yes, fine,” she said rather dismissively, suspecting her answer made no difference.

“Great,” he said just as promptly and stood up, she watched as Park and Sims followed his lead. “I know you two will have plenty of preparation to do. So we’ll meet here again tomorrow morning, 7am.”

Sims grumbled something under his breath about it being too early as Adler walked away from them. 

“Bye then, Bell,” Park said giving the young woman a sweet smile, “Bye Adler,” she called over her shoulder in a harsher tone.

The man gave her something akin to a wave. He didn’t even turn to look at her as he was now sat down at the kitchen table, shifting around documents and lighting a cigarette already. “Good luck with that one,” Park said to her, loud enough for Adler to hear.

The front door clicked shut and the room was silent now. She stood there for a moment wondering what to do. Just as she was about to head towards the stairs he turned and looked at her, as if he just realised she was in the room.

”Come over here, I could use your help.”

The woman hesitated for a moment before she walked over, taking the seat next to him. “Take a look at this one,” he said, laying a sheet of paper down in front of her. He rooted around for something else and she took the opportunity to stare at him while he was so close and distracted at the same time.

His “good” side, the one without the vicious looking scars, was facing her now. “And this one,” he mumbled, placing a second piece of paper in front of her.

Adler didn’t seem to be paying attention to her bold gazing. His usual acute observations on her were blighted as he heavily focused on something else.

“I think I’ve got this first part down, it’s just when I get down here I can’t get a grasp on it,” he was leaned in close now as he physically pointed out what he was referring to.

She could smell all the smoke that built up on his clothes throughout the day. After a while the smell of cigarettes always faded into something subtle and not too unpleasant, and she could say that as a non-smoker. Mixed in with the nicotine was a fairly strong woody cologne, she noted he hadn’t changed it since they first started working together. 

Much to her self-loathing, the effect it had on her hadn’t changed either.

“Bell?”

“Mm,” she shook herself awake as she realised she had zoned out on him. Daydreaming about the man while being sat near the man? “Yes sorry, I’m still half asleep. I’ll see what I can do with it.”

He hummed in response, beginning to light his second cigarette. “I’ll make sure you’re paid for helping us out, don’t worry.”

“I should hope so,” Bell murmured, her eyes already sizing up the documents in front of her. These weren’t straight forward in the slightest, no wonder he was having trouble.

Still, she knew she could do it. If there was one thing she knew about herself, it was that she was an awfully good cryptographer. Knowing there was something she could do greater than Adler gave her more satisfaction than she cared to admit. He _needed_ her for something, thank goodness.

Adler had stood up now. He opted to stand in front of her, just a few metres away. Bell registered that this was done in order to spare her from having his second hand smoke in her face.

It was these tiny, unspoken gestures that made her heart flitter merrily. Would he do that for any non smoker? She wondered to herself. Maybe she was the only non smoker he knew anyway. She was the only non smoker _she_ knew. 

He leaned against the ledge of the kitchen sink behind him. “The BND paying you well? Looks like they are.”

“What do you mean by that ?” The girl asked in a bored monotone voice, not bothering to look up at him.

“The apartment... the clothes...”

She raised her hand up to run her fingers over the short, gold chain she always wore. “Is it a problem?”

A small, amused smirk came to his face at her naive concern for his passing comments. He watched her coolly as he raised the cigarette to his mouth, inhaling and exhaling the smoke in a leisurely manner. “The skirts a little short, don’t you think?”

Bell’s mind went blank with that. She cursed herself for not being more witty in situations like this. Ideally she’d have a cutting remark to counter him with. Instead she just felt her face turn helplessly hot and prickly, she could only assume how pink her cheeks were.

“I’m just not use to seeing you like this, that’s all.” He was testing her.

“Well get use to it,” she said moodily, throwing her curls over her shoulder as she turned her attention back to the work.

“I’ll try my best,” he said, stubbing his cigarette out in the ash tray next to her. He grabbed the phone off the table and started to make his way towards the stairs.

When he was gone, she looked down at her stockinged thighs and stroked the hem of her skirt thoughtfully. Why would he say something like that? She would likely reflect on  this moment constantly now.

Just like old times. Every interaction her and Adler had was doomed to replay over and over again in her head until she had analysed and scrutinised every detail, always obsessively.


	6. Chocolate

It was strange returning to the BND building, but she was thankful for it. The pristine environment smelt purely of by cleaning products, the safe house just smelt of dusty general oldness.

Her heels echoed satisfyingly along the quiet corridors as she made her way to her office. As she stepped in to the familiar tiny room, it was no surprise for her to see the huge pile of documents on her desk. Likely not too dissimilar to what she had been doing for the past few days.

Only here she’d be alone, no Adler, Park or Sims to fill the silence.

“Excuse me, Miss Winter,” a skittish looking young woman knocked the door and hovered in the doorway.

And then there was that too.

Back with them she was _Bell_ , now that she’s back here it’s _Winter_. Two different worlds, same work. The name situation could be perplexing if she thought about it too deeply.

“Yes hello,” she tried to smile warmly, but had a feeling it didn’t reach her eyes.

“Mr Arnold would like to see you in his office right away.”

Bell stopped the grimace threatening to come to her face. She stood instead, stepping past the woman carefully. “Thank you,” Bell nodded and started on her way.

-

Her commanding officer Mr Arnold was more miserable than usual that day as she sat in his office. It was a grand, vast room. About four times the size of hers, and four times more aesthetically pleasing as well, if all the gold accents and mahogany fixtures were anything to go by.

She had always thought the German man vaguely resembled an English bull dog, so it wasn’t difficult for him to look grumpy. Sometimes she wondered if it was just his face that made him come across so discourteous, but those thoughts were promptly squashed with every encounter she had with him.

He sighed as he shuffled some papers together, indicating to her that her presence was a chore.

She really didn’t have many good work place relationships.

“So, you’ll be working with Adler for the forthcoming months, two days a week will be designated for you to come here and conduct your work with the BND. You’ll be working with Adler’s task force Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and the BND Thursday, Friday,” he droned indifferently. 

Bell tilted her head to try and read the documents he had to hand, making him narrow his eyes at her and place them down. “Any questions?”

“Sorry sir, I was just wondering did you arrange this with Adler himself?”

“No,” he said sharply, “There was no arranging. He told us what would be happening and we had no choice but to comply.”

She blinked at him uselessly as the man’s stern gaze on her didn’t falter. “It seems appeasing Mr Adler plays a large part in keeping the BND and CIA alliance strong, I understand that he is a highly decorated and respected agent...”

Bell nodded obediently, failing to understand what his point was.

“But in times like these, the BND is reliant on skills like yours, and skills of your caliber are not easy to find,” he told her. “So actually, this is a great inconvenience. I’m not sure why he would insist we take you if he were just goingto call you back again so soon. I would prefer to have agents I don’t have to share.”

The young woman kept a straight face but heaved in heavily, the grouchy man’s bored disdain made her stomach twist in knots.

“I don’t know why he’s made this decision either, sir,” she said softly, “I do apologise.”

The man hummed deeply, placing his nearby reading glasses on his face and beginning to sign something. “I see he usually gets what he wants, and what he wants now is _you_. So there’s nothing to be done. I just hope while you are here, you’ll work as hard as you can. Don’t forget all the BND has done for you.”

The young woman nodded again quickly, and then realised the incessant nodding was making her look ingenuous and stopped. “I’ll do everything I can sir, I promise.”

The man managed a tight, insincere smile that disappeared as fast as it appeared. “See yourself out, Winter.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. She nibbled on her lip as she walked out of the room. _It wasn’t really that bad_ , she told herself.

Bell felt pathetic as she breathed in and out slower to calm her nerves. How was it that she had seen so much violence and destruction, but was ready to buckle under the pressure of an unappeasable superior?

As the woman paced the halls with her head down, her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice.

“Miss Winter!” 

She raised her head to see Roth, the typical sight of him in his suit and immaculate hair put her at ease. He had a folder under one arm, a coffee cup in the other hand and a surprisingly large smile on his face. Just for her.

“Hi,” she breathed, returning the smile to the best of her abilities.

“You look very flustered, is everything okay?”

Bell nodded without hesitation, not wanting to share the details of what had her so unsettled. “Everything’s fine. How are you?”

“Good, thank you,” he said. “Have you been sick? I haven’t seen you for days.”

The young woman stopped for a moment to weigh up her options of what she would tell him. She decided a vague half truth would suffice.

“I’ve been assigned to work somewhere else for most of the week. I’m only here part time for... the foreseeable future I suppose.”

This peaked the mans interest, his eyebrows raised in curiosity as he seemingly waited for her to continue.

“I shouldn’t really go into detail.”

“Of course not, sorry, I don’t mean to pry.”

Roth scratched the back of his neck for a few seconds in thought before he spoke again. “What are you doing at lunch time?”

Bell couldn’t resist then, she gave him a good natured smile. “Hopefully eating lunch.”

The man snorted, bringing his coffee up to his lips with a begrudging smirk. “Not funny.”

His cynical reaction made her giggle, but she was anxious as she suspected what would come out of his mouth next. She had already started thinking of her answer to it.

“I’m trying to to ask if you wanted to eat with me.”

Adler had told her that she shouldn’t even be leaving the building during her work hours. Apparently wondering around in public without protection was high risk. The man had even resorted to dropping her off and picking her up from the place, something she believed to be drastic. Of course, there was always the risk of being followed or intercepted. Apparently Adler didn’t trust her to look out for these things herself.

 _It’s not like I’m a spy or anything_ , she had thought bitterly

Still, she reasoned, it wasn’t a big deal if she went and sat in a restaurant for a short while. Roth would be with her, and he was a BND agent. That was nearly as good as Adler, Park or Sims surely.

What’s more, she hadn’t been out in public since her security breach situation had started. And she hadn’t been looking forward to the packed lunch she had with her either.

“Miss Winter,” he tilted his head down at her when she took a few seconds too long to answer, “I’ll understand if you say no.”

Without thinking any further she shook her head at this. “I would like that actually. What did you have in mind?”

Roth chuckled nervously. “I don’t know, I didn’t think I’d get this far.”

Bell looked confused for a few seconds before she laughed out loud, stifling it quickly when she heard the door of a nearby office slam in response.

“I’ll think of something,” he reassured, touching her forearm lightly. “I’ll come and get you at lunch time.”

“Okay.”

“See you.”

“See you,” she whispered at his back as retreated down the hallway briskly. 

A sickly feeling settled in her stomach after the initial pleasantness had worn off.   
  


_The food had better be worth it._

-

Bell walked out of the large BND building at 5pm, it was already dark and chilly. A feeling of comfort spread through Bell’s chest as she set eyes on Adler’s black car in the parking lot.

Maybe him picking her up from work really wasn’t such a terrible thing after all.

“Hello,” she smiled as she got into the passenger seat.

“Hi kid.”

She turned to look at him to find he was already staring at her. Naturally he had his shades, they were in public, but the woman could tell he was scrutinising her. After a few seconds he reached his hand over and roughly rubbed his thumb over the corner of her lips, smudging away a tiny chocolate stain she had on that spot.

“Stop,” she whined, shooing his hand away swiftly and moving her body away. The woman stared at him like he had just grown another head.

Adler simply started the car and started to drive off, it was until he was out of the parking lot and on the road that he spoke again.

“I told you not to go out for lunch.”

 _How did he_... Bell tried her hardest not to let her shock manifest on her face, but she knew it was probably there already. The possibilities and options of what to say next raced through her mind. There was definitely no room to lie.

“I didn’t go alone.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Bell was confused at his casual tone, the man currently didn’t sound irritated. His body language was relaxed as he drove the car. He continuously observed around him as he drove. Even when they came to an empty country road, like clockwork his eyes checked every mirror and direction periodically.

The begrudging thought crossed her mind that she was more than capable of constantly checking her mirrors, if that’s really all it took to make sure they weren’t being stalked.

“How did you even know for sure?” Bell asked after a while, admitting her defeat.

“I just know that when we got groceries in yesterday, there was nothing with chocolate in there. But if that is something you wanted, you could have just asked,” he said, shooting her a judgemental, subtly amused look that only served to embarrass her.

Bell couldn’t help but laugh to herself breathily, shaking her head in disbelief at the reality. She’d been caught out because of chocolate on her face. It wasn’t unusual for her to feel hopelessly immature around Adler, but this was taking it to new extremities. “Maybe I got it from someone in the building?”

“Maybe that could have been the case, but you already admitted what you did.”

She decided she was done with the conversation after that, the woman was just thankful he didn’t appear to be furious. Although the fact that he was so calm and even slightly friendly unnerved her. The woman leaned against the window to put space between them, every so often glancing at him to check if his mood changed.

“I’m not mad,” he said finally, aware of her antsy behaviour. “I just hope you enjoyed it because you’re not doing it again.”

Bell dared to huff gently, turning her body away from him more. “Don’t you think this is all a bit excessive...”

He didn’t answer this time, instead reaching over to turn on the radio. By the time they pulled into driveway of the safe house Adler’s silence was deafening.

The woman was thankful when she walked in to see Park and Sims, sat round the kitchen table. 

“Glad you’re here, now we can get into it,” Park said. She was already arranging various pictures and pieces of paper on the kitchen table, which appeared to be a makeshift evidence board now.

Bell soured at this, she thought about informing her that she had already spent a day working for the BND and she wasn’t inclined to do any further work with another intelligence agency. She thought better of it. “You’ve been waiting for me?”

“All day,” Sims chimed in casually. “These two have been pissed off that we’ve had to delay.”

She gave Sims a small shrug and apologetic smile. “My loyalties are a bit split at the moment I’m afraid.”

“Don’t spread yourself too thin,” he said as she walked forward to look at the table.

The woman’s eyes scanned over the photos and notes. One thing in particular demanded her attention. A picture of a woman, slim with short cropped blonde hair, her face had an unusual elegance to it. She was being photographed without her knowledge from afar.

“Who is she?” Bell asked without even thinking, not being able to resist picking up the photo to get a closer look.

Bell was use to seeing photos of men when looking at evidence, the ghastly type of men at that. Occasionally there had been a woman or two, but not one that was quite so ethereal looking.

“Emily Seidel, a recent Perseus recruit,” Park informed her promptly, snapping her out of her fixation.

“Really?” Bell pondered, furrowing her brows at the photo. “Doesn’t look like she would be.”

Sim’s chuckled at this and she glanced at him in puzzlement, before it clicked in her head the stupidity of what had come out of her mouth. “Maybe you should go look in the mirror.”

“Could be your replacement,” Park mused, resting her elbow on the table and leaning in closer. “Women bring certain qualities and advantages a man never could.”

Bell considered this for a moment, searching the photo deeply. The woman looked hauntingly worried in the face. Her body language, the way her chest and head were angled forward, implied she was storming off somewhere. Being a Perseus spy must get stressful, she thought.

Without looking she felt Adler come to stand near here, arms crossed as he observed her observing the picture. “We have another photo of her, if you want to see it.”

The young woman watched as Adler reached his hand across the table and slid another Polaroid across the surface. “Here you go, Bell, take a look.”

The woman frowned in confusion at the man’s unsettling enthusiasm. She suspected a barely there, bitter sarcasm. Taking the photo cautiously she turned her eyes down to it.

This time the photo of the woman was taken through a window, she was sat down at a table alone. Itwas fairly close range, so much so that Bell could see the newspaper in front of her along with the mug and plate with what looked like some sort of baked good on it.

Suddenly her breath hitched in her throat as she noticed the small but clearly visible sign on the door of the building.

_Oh._

There were countless cafes like this in Berlin, but it just so happens this was the exact one she had been in a few hours ago. The thought sickened her to the core, but the dread of Adler’s resentment towards her was worse.

“You recognise that place?” Adler pressed. “It’s not far from where you work. She’s way too close for comfort if you ask me.”

Bell thrust the photo back at the man, feeling too ashamed to look at him. She turned her attention back to the evidence on the table, but the words and pictures all seemed to blur into one at this point.

“Is she the one then? The one who found out where I lived?” Bell asked quietly.

“It’s not likely, she’s been out of the country, she a frequent traveller, never in one place for too long, she flew back in yesterday. She’s here on business naturally...” Park told her.

“What does she do?” The young woman asked immediately, her curiosity distracting her from her gloominess.

“Miss Seidel is somewhat of a socialite,” Park said, passing her a piece of paper. It was a list of around a dozen male names. “She’s had romantic relationships with multiple high ranking officials, military personnel, politicians, maybe possibly even some of yours.”

Bell frowned at park then. “Some of mine?”

“Your friends at the BND. Emily’s been a busy girl,” Sims chimed in.

She looked down at the paper in her hand, then quickly shook her head dismissively and handed the list back to Park. “I don’t know any of these men.”

“She doesn’t do small time,” Adler explained. “It would likely be special officers far up the food chain that you haven’t even heard of, not the ones you work with day to day.”

The young woman nodded in understanding, it made sense to her. She couldn’t imagine a woman like this having time for a man like Roth. Emily clearly wanted men dripping with power and fulled to the brim with secrets.

“Special officers like you, is that right?” She turned to Adler with a small smile, the slight flattery actually managed to earn her a small amused smile back from him. 

“Not quite kid, special officers like me don’t fall for this shit.” Bell gave a small silent laugh at his cockiness.

“I’m sure that’s what all the men she’s pumped intel from say,” Park pointed out dryly, a cynic bite to her voice.

“I’m sure they do, maybe if they weren’t completely controlled by sex they’d stand a chance,” Adler quipped back. 

Sims nodded his agreement at this. “The free world suffers because they think with what’s between their legs. It’s a damn shame.”

Bell thought about these comments as she looked at the photos again. She tried to imagine Emily cozied up to an old politician, whispering sweet nothings in his ear, she wondered how pillow talk could lead to a man leaking top secret information all over the place. In the end she concluded the woman must be dangerously and scarily persuasive.

“So what are we going to do about her?” Bell asked, glancing around at the three of them.

Park looked pleased that the woman asked. “How do you feel about nightclubs, Bell?”

“I don’t feel anything at all,” she responded quietly, a pout already forming on her face as she suspected what was coming.

The British woman smiled brightly. “This won’t be an issue for you then, here’s the plan.”

-  
Hours later, their meeting came to a close. Bell felt drained by the end of it. And now she had something new to dread. As far as missions went, capturing one of Perseus’s agents seemed more daunting than a full on fire fight to her. 

Her stomach felt sickly as she thought about the blonde woman from the photographs. She found herself wondering what the CIA had in store for Emily when they got their bloodied hands on her. _Let’s hope they’re kinder to you_ , she thought to herself, running her finger over the blonde woman’s photo that had been left on the table.

All the thoughts had rendered the girl restless, so she resorted to wandering around the house without any real purpose.

She had nights like this before when she had the luxury of living freely, it was usually remedied by a fast walk up and down the street. The woman felt jaded as she remembered how she had been taken small pleasures like that for granted. Freedom was nice while it lasted.

Bell was about to retreat back upstairs when she felt a chill tickle her bare legs. Her eyes drifted to the source of the cold air and saw the kitchen door leading to the back of the house was cracked open. 

With caution she moved towards it, slowly peaking her head around the door into the outdoors. Her shoulders sagged in relief when she saw Adler leaned against the wall, typical stance with a cigarette in his hand. His shades were off.

He glanced at her casually as he blew out smoke into the brisk night air. His eyes trailed up and down her form, she was only dressed in a short white slip, a baggy knitted cardigan and some flimsy ballet style slippers.

“You should go back inside, you’ll catch your death out here,” he said, allowing his gaze to linger a few seconds too long before looking straight.

The woman pulled her outerwear around herself tighter, angling her gaze towards the ground as she tried to think about what she could say. Their time alone together wasn’t in short supply these days, but this moment felt different. The atmosphere was unyielding, it was the sort so strong and obviously present that she was certain he must feel it too.

“I’m sorry.”

The older man didn’t acknowledge this in the slightest, he just continued to smoke and look off into the distance. Behind the property was nothing but grassy land as far as the eye could see. Bell could see the appeal of standing out here in the emptiness, the nothingness stretching on forever, it was almost hypnotic.

Giving him one final look, she gave up and turned around. As she stepped up into the doorway she heard him speak again.

“I really do just want to see you safe, you know.”

Bell paused in the doorway for a moment, letting out a tiny sigh. She stepped back out and slowly walked towards him. “Why?”

The man scratched the forming stubble on his chin. “You know better than to ask me that.”

Bell feigned innocence, staring at him as if to silently ask for an explanation. She knew exactly what he meant however, she really did know better than to put him in a position where he’d have to articulate his feelings. Towards anything for that matter, let alone towards _her_.

“What me and you have is good, given our history it’s amazing actually,” he said to her, dropping his used up cigarette onto the ground and stubbing it out with his shoe. “Leave well enough alone.”

Bell swallowed tensely at this and felt her cheeks start to sting with heat.

She didn’t want to admit what these new words sounded like. But still it was undeniable. He was acknowledging that he knew, but not even giving her a chance to come to terms with that before he began to passively warn her off.

“I don’t know what you mean...” the woman whispered, not being able to keep the edge out of her voice.

“I don’t get it, Bell,” he said ignoring her completely, “You’re a _spy_ , a good one too. But when it comes to _this_ , you’re about as subtle as a shotgun to the face.” 

She should have known it would be this anti-climatic. Of course there would be no cinematic scene where she carefully and purposefully professed her love for him. It was always fated to be like this, him stood there with the upper hand as always, talking down to her. And of course it would come with no warning, it had to catch her off guard with no time to steel herself. 

Bell heard the familiar click of his lighter and wondered if he had lit a cigarette just to smoke while he watched her squirm.

“I’m really not sure what to say,” Bell said, her voice breathy with a sigh. The woman didn’t want to give him the win so easily, but in this moment she had nothing to fight back with.

“You don’t have to say anything, you never did.”

She hummed at this, a soft amusement coming to her face. “Did I make you feel uncomfortable, Adler?”

He chuckled lowly and Bell was relieved to hear it. The mood was steadily lightening. “Not uncomfortable... but it’s not been easy either.”

Bell’s perplexity was true this time. She tilted her head towards him, encouraging him to expand on it. Adler flicked his cigarette away for the second time and stepped closer to her, agonisingly slowly.

The young woman didn’t know where to put her eyes, she didn’t think she was quite ready to look him the face. Maybe she never would be again.

“It’s just, when you look at me with those eyes... _very_ pretty eyes,” his gaze bore down on her as he spoke, his hand came to rest on her body. The smooth callouses on his hands pressed into her delicate bare shoulder, his thumb started to massage circles just below her collarbone.“Sometimes it’s like you’re just begging me to do something.”

Bell’s lips parted slightly as if she wanted to respond, but nothing came. Her eyes grew glassy and hazy as she stared past his body, allowing her vision to blur.

The soft lowness of his voice had a tenderness to it that made her want to bury herself into his chest. Even more than that, she craved his big arms dwarfing her small body as he brought her into his embrace. His touch on her exposed, soft skin was a careful balance of firm and delicate. And then there was the scent of him... even smelling so fresh of cigarettes from the chain smoking, it still intoxicated her.

All of Bell’s senses were under the influence. Her disbelief had vanished, this was suppose to happen. Nothing had felt more natural to her than this.

“I know you probably get frustrated,” he said huskily, leaning down so he was closer to her ear, his breath fanned out across her skin and warmed her against the coldness. “But haven’t you ever considered how difficult it is for me too?”

 _I really am self involved_ , she thought to herself lazily.

With a deep breath she finally set eyes on his face, peering up through her lashes fiercely. The fact that she could see his eyes mirroring the hot-blooded lust and longing she had was enough to make her burst.

  
She felt his impact on her all throughout her body. From the dizzy headache forming, all the way down to the way she throbbed achingly between her thighs. “Why is it difficult for you?” her voice still sounding strained and airy. She swallowed and spoke again. “You could have me anytime you wanted.”

“And you don’t have that choice?”

“No, you know I could never try anything ...you would have pushed me away,” she huffed, the confusion would wreck havoc on her mind with how highly strung she was right now. 

Adler shook his head, his hand coming up to stroke the curls away from her face, smoothing them down over her shoulder blades. “You think too highly of me,Bell.”

The man carefully leaned in, smiling at her wryly before he pressed his lips against the corner of her mouth solidly. He let himself linger there for a small moment, feeling the cold, smooth skin of her cheek before he pulled away.

As expected, Bell looked bewildered at the gesture. Her small, thin hand stroked the spot he had just been.

“I think we should both get some sleep,” he said, watching Bell closely in her dazed and confused state.

“I’m um... I’ll stay out here a little while... the stars are pretty,” her voice sounded absent and far away.

The man stared for a moment, a cryptic look of concern and curiosity came to his face. He shook it off. “Alright, but not for too long.”

Bell hummed her agreement. As soon as he was gone she felt her eyes sting with tears. Not sad or happy, just entirely overwhelmed.

The only thing she was certain of in this moment was that she needed more.


	7. Emily

* * *

Bell picked at the slinky material of her short black dress, hating how snuggly it stuck to her skin more and more by the minute.

“How much longer until she gets here?” She asked, her voice dripping with boredom.

Park sat in the passenger seat while Adler sat in the drivers seat of their parked car, perfectly content on ignoring the grumbles and complaints coming from her in the backseat.

Her head perked up to look out the window when she heard the drunken, joyful shouts of a group of people. They were heading towards the nightclub across the street, but her target definitely wasn’t among them.

For the best part of an hour, the girl had been looking out for the tall, blonde woman that would be Emily. She knew her follow agents had that part handled, but she was eager for this mission to start. Waiting had her on edge, it gave her a chance to torturously overthink herself.

“I think our girl’s running late,” Park confirmed, checking her watch casually.

Bell threw herself back in her seat with a small huff, crossing her arms over her chest. This caught Adler’s attention, he turned around to look at her questioningly. “What’s wrong with you?”

She shrugged. “I just want it to be over with. We’ve been waiting here for hours.”

“We’ve been waiting here for forty five minutes,” he retorted sharply.

Bell didn’t respond to this, but she noticed the way his eyes started to move up and down her body in her small, tight dress purposefully so she could see.

When he sent her a cheeky smirk, she had to fight back a smile of her own. She wouldn’t indulge him. The man was trying to keep her quiet by entertaining, as if she were a child. Bell wasn’t having any of that.

Even if she knew she was acting like one.

“Shouldn’t be much longer,” Park musedresting her head on her hand, oblivious to the exchange the other two in the car had just shared. “She meets her client at midnight so she’ll have to be here soon.”

“Maybe the plans have changed?” Bell offered, a welcoming thought of turning around and going back to the safe house sprung to mind.

“She’ll be here,” Adler reassured firmly, holding his hand up to the two woman. “Just hold tight.”

The three sat quietly for a while longer, the muffled chatter of people in the surrounding streets filing the silence. A short while later a ominous black car pulled up in front of the main entrance of the club.

Noticing the way Adler and Park became more alert upon its arrival, Bell leaned forward to get a better look.

Three burly, menacing looking men stepped out of the vehicle and she got ready to sit back in her seat at the apparent false alarm, until she saw her.

A statuesque, willowy woman exited shortly after them. She was hard to miss. A barely there spangly, silver dress shimmered under the street lights. Her crop of honey coloured hair bounced on her head animatedly as she moved to grab her coat and bag out the backseat of the car.

“That’s her isn’t it?” Bell questioned as she watched the woman’s movements in awe.

Park had quickly snapped a few pictures of the woman in question as she disappeared into the club, her three henchmen in tow. 

“That’s her,” Adler confirmed, he turned to the girl and look at her momentously through his sunglasses. “You ready for this?”

“Of course,” she confirmed quietly, not quite meeting his eye in an attempt to hide any lingering anxiousness.

“Remember,” Park began, “You’ll be alone in there. You need to get Emily out the back entrance of the building, alone, none of her security guards, preferably willingly. We want to take her without anyone knowing.”

Bell made an effort to listen to the woman, but the lecture wasn’t helping and this was the umpteenth time she’d heard the plan. They had made sure to drum it into her already.

“If we don’t hear from you within the hour we’ll commence plan B,” Adler told her. “That’s worst case scenario, we really don’t want any conflict with so many civilians around.”

The girl gave a determined nod, deciding she’d heard enough she reached over to the car handle and opened the door. “I’ll do my best,” she said over her shoulder, climbing out of the car and into the inhospitable chill of the night.

-

Bell entered the smoky, dingy club and was instantly overwhelmed by the stench of sweat and stale alcohol. She remembered now why environments like this didn’t thrill her. Music boomed into her ears as she took in the sight of the crowd. Something about the way everybody seemed to blur into one gave her second thoughts about whether she’d be able to pull this plan off or not.

 _Where have you gone_ , she pondered to herself, nibbling on her lip as she scanned the masses of shifting bodies for a flash of a silver dress or long, bare limbs. 

When she had no luck, her eyes fell onto the bar area. Surprisingly only a few patrons loitered around it, for the most part it was the clearest part of the vicinity.

The girl began to squeeze her way through the sea of bodies, grimacing at the few unsolicited touches and general invasion of space. _Let this be over with_ , she seethed, _I never want to be in a nightclub sober again_.

She reached the safety of the bar, and it had her in mind of an oasis in the driest desert as pushed herself up onto one of the high stools. Her view was definitely clearer from here, so it didn’t take her long too spot Emily.

The woman sat on a couch in the corner, her lanky legs crossed and her lengthy arms sprawled across the the back. The security guards were spread out around her strategically. A few men and women sat near here, but she acted as if they weren’t there.  


“Can I get you a drink miss?”

Bell reluctantly stopped her observations to look at the bartender instead, he was evidently displeased with her sitting there without ordering a beverage.

_I do need to blend in_

“Vodka and coke,” she responded. “Thank you.”

The knots in her stomach meant drinking vodka was the last thing she desired in this moment, it was the simply first answer that popped into her head. She had never thought about her alcohol preferences, in actual fact she’d always just consumed whatever was going at the time.

She glanced at the glass miserably as the young man placed it down on the counter in front of her. “Thanks.”

Bell sat at the bar sipping the drink sporadically, her eyes flickered to Emily every few minutes. From here, Bell could see her rapidly grow increasingly uninspired and irritable. She hissed things at her security guards, dismissed the people sat nearby. Her body got tenser, face got somehow prettily meaner. Anymore people who tried to get near her were brashly turned away. Her space was off limits, _she_ was off limits.

Just as Bell started to feel the dejection of possible failure, Emily stood up from her seat. She started to move through the crowd, gracefully manoeuvring around people when they didn’t make room for her to pass anyway.

She noted no one grabbed at her or shoved her, maybe she exuded importance that Bell could never. Or it might have been that one of her bodyguards followed her closely, choosing to bulldoze his way through the dance floor instead. 

Maybe Bell was giving her too much credit, this was woman was well known here.

Bell downed the rest of her drink and scrunched her face up at the sharp taste. Now was her chance. She began to walk into the general direction she saw the blonde woman head.

She stood on her tip toes, trying to see over heads. Even in her high heels she was decidedly too short to accomplish seeing past anyone. Soon she spotted a well lit corridor and started to make a break towards it, until she felt a tug at her arm.

The young woman shot her head round and snatched herself away in a flash, her keen reflexes startling the culprit. The unrecognisable young man’s eyes widened at the remarkably sudden movement.

“Sorry,” he yelled over the music, holding his hands up in surrender. “I just wanted to say, I think you’re so beautiful-“

She had already stopped listening as her eyes drifted back towards the other direction. Any other time perhaps she’d be more cordial, tonight she didn’t have a second to spare.

“I’m sorry, not tonight.” Bell didn’t wait for his reaction, she just prayed he didn’t follow her as she briskly moved away.

-

Eventually Bell reached the only possible place she thought Emily could be, the ladies bathroom.

She paced towards it quickly, perfectly aware of one of her target’s men looming over to the side. As she went to open the door he placed a thick arm in front of her. “You can’t go in.”

Bell looked exaggeratively puzzled at him, shaking her head in disbelief. “Why not? I’m bursting.”

The man shrugged with pure indifference. “Not my problem.”

The woman’s agitation grew. Bell couldn’t decide if she was angered more at him being yet another obstacle in her mission, or the mere fact that a man was stopping her from using the bathroom.

“What should I do then?”

“Go outside and squat down.” He sniggered, pleased with himself at that remark.

Just as she was about to fire back a retort, the door swung open and there stood Emily, a filthy scowl on her face. 

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” The German woman spat at the man. “You want to see her piss herself all over the floor?”

Both the security guard and Bell stood there in momentary silence, stunned at the sudden outburst. The grown man even started to redden.

The woman let out an intolerant growl.

“Do you have _any_ idea how much of a scene you’re making by blocking off a public toilet?” She hissed at him venomously. “Use your brain. Let her in.”

Without ceremony the man moved away, an utterly appalled look his face. Bell didn’t blame him, the person he was protecting had just thrown said protection back in his face.

The dramatic irony wasn’t lost on Bell, Emily’s thanklessness towards her security had just blown the window of opportunity wide open for her.

She followed the taller girl into the bathroom. Under the ugly fluorescent lights, she could see the her crystal clearly now. More specifically, Bell could see the circle of white around her right nostril.

_On the job?_

Bell decided not to pretend to use the toilet, instead she got a powder compact out of her bag and started to dab her face in the mirror. She opened her mouth and rubbed at the deep rose lipstick that had transferred onto her teeth. Emily raised a thin mean-spirited eyebrow at her. “You didn’t really need to go then?”

She closed the compact and smiled at the girl unassumingly. “I really just wanted to escape this idiot that’s been tailing me all night. I’ve kind of lost my friends. It’s been a nightmare.”

The blonde stared her up and down shrewdly, unashamedly. Her icy feline-esque eyes locked onto Bell’s deer like ones unyieldingly. “Well, you’re a pretty little girl, it’s what happens when you come to places like this.” She turned away from her with those words, pulling out what looked like a gold cased lipstick from her own bag. With no discretion in the slightest, she unscrewed the top and tapped it onto her wrist. “If you don’t like it don’t come.”

White powder spilled out and settled onto the woman’s hand, she side eyed Bell with a devious, smug smile. “Sorry, do you mind?”

In response, Bell put on a big show of indifference. Leaning back against the sinkand shrugging simply. The woman was aiming to intimidate her, clearly trying to shock and awe her by doing hardcore drugs in her face. 

At first guess, Bell would think she was just a sadistic show off, trying to torment a girl who blatantly looked far more innocent than her. But it was always possible Emily had an inclination of her identity and was trying to psyche her out, if she really was explicitly in Perseus’s circle.

Emily leaned down to sniff the substance up her nose, as soon as she did she turned to check Bell’s reaction. The German girl smirked when she saw the same blank look on her face.

“Do you want some?”

Bell kept her face still, but she feared Emily could see the vein move up and down in her neck tensely. This, she hadn’t been anticipating. 

She had done it before, more times than she’d ever care to acknowledge. Those first few months left alone in Berlin had been nothing short of a spiteful adolescence styled rebellion.

But here? On a mission, in the presence of the target?With Adler and Park waiting outside...

Would they congratulate her on her dedication to the mission? Or would they screw their faces up in disgust, look at her as if she were a sewer rat? 

As if they had any room to judge, she reminded herself.

 _Just one line to win her over_ , Bell thought. _One line won’t do anything_.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she nodded. “Yes please.”

Emily promptly started to tap more of the drugs out onto her hand, a look of quiet pleasant surprise on her regal face. Bell’s heart began to thump painfully as it dawned on her that the situation had become dramatically more perilous.

She kept her composure as Emily brought a hand up to her face, the coke starkly white even against the woman’s milky complexion.

Forcing her face down against her minds glaringly loud protests, Bell snorted the substance into her body. She sniffed and pinched her nose, side eyeing the tall woman begrudgingly as she was merrily getting ready to leave the bathroom.

“It’s so nice to meet someone who isn’t a complete bore.” Bell flinched as the Germanappeared besides her and linked arms with her insistently. “I’m Emily, stick with me. I’ll keep all the big bad men away.”

-

Bell glanced at her watch, the clock wasticking down. After a short while spent on the dance floor, she was sat with Emily now. The woman’s stoic and sarky manner had changed, she was now warmly charming. Bell had witnessed two different sides to the woman in under an hour. 

Their bare knees touched as they spoke, they were leaned in close so they could hear each other over Stevie Nick’s _edge of seventeen_ blaring out. And Emily could _talk_ , and talk and talk and talk. Bell had to remind herself that the girl’s chatty nature was likely a side effect of the drugs.

“Oh, you never told me your name.”

Bell hid her increasing weariness with a sunny smile. “I’m Sabrina.”

The German pulled back from her with a delighted glint in her eye, her red painted lips spread into a wide dazzling smile. “As in, Sabrina theteenage witch?“ she spoke in perfect English this time.

Bell gave genuine laughter at the sound of this. “You like American television?”

Her lips curled up in repulsion at the question. “Sometimes. It’s a guilty pleasure. It’s one of the few things the Americans can do right. I think they’re truly a filthy breed in every other sense.”

Emily look at the other woman who appeared startled by the abrupt revelation, she smiled at her apologetically. “Sorry, now is not the time to get political. We’re having fun.”

Bell shook her head, she leaned over again, so closely that her silky, fluffy curls tumbled onto the blonde’s bare shoulder. “I feel exactly the same. I’ve just always been afraid to tell people.”

In response she opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it again promptly. She was suddenly fixated on Bell’s glitzy wrist watch. “Is that the time?” She muttered.

Slowly a panic started to descend and the easy atmosphere started to plummet. Bell slyly observed the German woman as she stood up so quickly she wobbled in her heels. She turned to one of the men around her.

“I told you to look out for him! Have you seen him?!” The man on the receiving end ofher frantic anger shook his head quickly.

“Oh god,” she growled in anguish, throwing herself back down onto the couch and burying her head in her hands.

Bell didn’t say anything for a moment, but now she knew. Emily hadn’t the slightest idea of her links back to Perseus, it was obvious. She wouldn’t break down in front of her like this if she did.

“Is everything alright?” She asked her at last, touching the woman’s forearm arm faintly.

“No everything is not.” The woman’s eyes began to dampen, a single blackened tear from her eye makeup streaked down her gaunt cheek. “I was suppose to be meeting someone... I must have missed him.”

Deciding to play up her cluelessness, Bell titled her head up at her in curiosity. “A boy? What does he look like? Maybe I’ve seen him.”

“No,” she whined desperately, her lip quivering. “They’re going to fucking kill me.”

Bell eyes downturned to her watch again. Fifteen minutes to get Emily outside, fifteen minutes to get her alone, fifteen minutes to ditch the bodyguards. She looked at the distressed girl now, running agitated hands through her golden hair and suppressing self-pitiful whimpers.

_Is this the best Perseus can do these days?_

She was an amateur, Bell concluded. Likely hired out of convenience alone because of the position she already had in German society, she was a far cry from woman like Helen Park or Greta Keller. Emily Seidel in truth had no business in _this_ business.

“What have you gotten yourself involved in?” Bell questioned with sweet faux concern, her honeyed words just made the woman sob harder.

“I’m not even sure if I know entirely,” Emily told her, struggling to keep her now thin voice loud over the music. “It’s all just got a bit out of my control.”

A flicker of empathy crossed Bell. Of course she knew all too well what that felt like.

She shook it off swiftly, her and the girl may have been akin when it came to their life story, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel quite sorry for her. Unless Perseus had discovered their own brand of MK ultra, this was the choice Emily had made. The CIA would be her consequence.

Exactly like what had happened to herself just some time ago, it was this thought that did make Bell wince. She had come full circle.

She stood up from her seat. Now was the time to be proactive. “Well... I wish I could help.”

Emily looked up at Bell with inquisitive, wild eyes. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t really feel like sitting here with you crying like this, you’re depressing me,” Bell responded, shrugging callously.

The German woman was stunned by her sudden change in demeanour, staring up at her in silence indignantly. This wasn’t something she was use to being told, and she didn’t care for it one bit Bell could gather. She took advantage of the woman’s speechlessness.

“Look, I was gonna go and see my dealer,” Bell decided to mimic the body language Emily had shown her in the bathroom earlier, shifting her wait onto one hip and eyeing her condescendingly. “He’s not too far from here. You can come if you want.”

The woman was hesitant to reply, still unsettled by the way Bell was addressing her.

“Or you can stay here snivelling in the middle of this shit hole,” she said, gesturing towards their general surroundings disdainfully. “I don’t mind.”

Bell wilfully ignored the bodyguards who were watching the two dangerously, she wondered if they would present themselves as problems. Emily seemed to have a pretty good handle on them, but did they answer to her or someone above her?

“Alright,” the German sniffed finally and stood as well, towering over Bell instantly. “No use staying here.”

Bell’s heart fluttered with relief, she beamed at the girl playfully. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the men start to move. “Oh, they can’t come,” she told her apologetically. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.”

Emily managed to smirk at Bell then, her damp eyes brightening momentarily before she turned. “You’re done for the night.”

 _Perfect_. Bell slipped her hand into Emily’s larger one, feeling her longer fingers squeeze affectionately. She started to lead her away speedily, determined not to give Emily’s men a chance to follow them. The two pushed through the crowd once more, Bell wasn’t bothered about the discomfort, she was on the home stretch now.

“My cars round the back,” she told the blonde enthusiastically as they reached the back of the place and got further and further from the pounding music. “I’ve only had a few drinks don’t worry.”

Emily hummed shakily, her contentment shafted by a lingering worry. She was hardly paying attention, in a sort of auto pilot as she followed Bell. “I think I’ll have to run away,” she murmured.

The two paced down a silent, empty hallway, their high heels echoed as they hit the stone floor. Bell side eyed her watch. Three minutes. “Run away?” Bell questioned. “Are you with some sort of mafia or something?”

She heard Emily take a deep intake of breath and exhale shakily. “No, no of course not. It was just a... a very important client.”

Bell paused when they finally reached the large fire exit doors of the back entrance. She looked at the woman stood opposite her, remembering that this would likely be the last she saw of her. A melancholy grin came to her face. _Good luck Emily_.

With that she opened the door and they both stepped out. Wrapping her arms around herself tightly, the tall woman turned to look at Bell with an alarmed look on her face. “ _God_ , where’s your coat?”

Bell of course noticed immediately that she had left her coat inside as soon as the icy wind stiffened her whole body. “I must have left it.”

“Oh well, let’s go back. You can’t be out here like this.”

Impatient now, she shook her head quickly. “I’ll be fine. The cars just down here.”

Emily looked down towards the dark alleyway to their right and then back at Bell, her face a picture of confusion. “But don’t you-“

“In all honesty, I hated that coat,” Bell cut her off. “I’m glad to be rid of it. Good excuse to buy a new one.”

The blonde woman sniggered at her in endearment. She threw her arm around the small girl and started to walk with her leisurely. “You’re strike me as a little weirdo,” she grinned exhaustedly. “I think me and you could be good friends.”

This time a sharpness of guilt pinched Bell’s chest, all she could do was smile as they wandered down the narrow pitch black path. Emily seemed to have settled down to a peaceful state, oblivious to Bell’s increasing trepidation as she anticipated Adler and Park pouncing on them.

“Is it much further, Sabrina-“ the woman’s voice broke off with a muffled screech. Bell recoiled violently as a white cloth suddenly covered Emily’s mouth.

Bell could only watch in horror as the girls eyes widened for a split second, shifted to look at her, and then rolled back into her head morbidly. Her lanky form clumsily crumpled backwards, two gloved hands prevented her from smacking into the concrete.

“Cutting it a bit short aren’t we, Bell?” She heard Park’s womanly voice sound out through the pitch black.

To her right, a flashlight clicked on and flooded light in their area. The unnerving sight was now on display, Park held up Emily’s now rag-dolled body with ease.

Footsteps clicked towards them and she realised she’d been holding in a breath during the whole conflict. She sighed out when she spotted Adler with the flashlight.

_It’s done._

“Gosh am I happy to see you,” she breathed, her relief immense in her chest. The man raised an eyebrow at her and she correct herself promptly. “Happy to see both of you.”

Adler offered her a small smirk as he began to help Park move Emily. She approached them quietly, now being able to see the parked van. When they opened the doors of the vehicle Bell’s mouth fell open softly, caught off guard by the fact that there was another body inside. This one male and tied up expertly.

“Who’s this?” Bell asked to either of them.

The pair bundled Emily’s inanimate body into the van, Bell grimaced at the sound of bones hitting the hard surface. An urge to tell them to be gentle with her flittered across her mind, but she thought better of it.

“That’s the man she was suppose to be meeting,” Park told her, slamming the van doors shut. “We weren’t planning on taking him tonight, but he decided to come down here for a little smoke break before he went in to meet your girl.”

Bell shook her head slowly in amazement as the woman walked round to get in the drivers seat. “So you just... took your chance?”

“You know us Bell,” Adler chimed in, approaching the girl as he lit a cigarette, the golden embers glowing against the darkness. “We’re opportunists.”

“Not sure that’s the word I would use,” Bell muttered, shifting from one foot to the other as the low temperatures started to numb her skin.

The man clicked on his flashlight again and focused the light up and down her body. “You lose something?”

Bell moved her glance away from him, an embarrassed sighed escaping her lips making condensation dance in front of her face. “I was in a rush, wasn’t I?”

Balancing his cigarette between his lips, Adler took off his tan leather jacket. Her petite shoulders felt narrower under the garments substantial size and weight as he draped it over her.

She pulled it around herself instinctively, her rigid body greedily drinking up the source of warmth. “Thank you.”

The man patted her arm. “I’d be a bit pissed off if you died of hypothermia, after everything.”

He was already walking away from her as he said that, the man exchanged a few words with Park before the she started the van’s engine and pulled off.

After the van was gone and it was just the two of them alone, he turned to her. “Come on,” he called out to her. “Let’s get you home.”


	8. Raccoons

By the time the pair had arrived at the safe house it was around 2 in the morning.

Bell somehow wasn’t tired, she was too tense for that. She went up to her room anyway, peeling off her dress that had turned unbearably sticky against her skin.

“Goodnight kid.”

She was mildly surprised at this sound as she turned her head towards her closed door. A fleeting disappointment crossed her at the thought of him just going to bed, but she pushed it back. She was far too drained to battle with love sickness tonight.

“Goodnight Adler.”

-

The girl was uncertain at how long she had been laid in her bed staring a the ceiling. Judging from the way the black sky had turned a moody navy blue, it must have been hours. 

_Emily_... Bell got herself worked up incessantly thinking about the girl. She envisioned her alone in a cell, her boney body shaking from the chills. Maybe already being interrogated, beaten? 

_No_. Bell was sure Emily would tell all straight away. She _hoped_ she would tell all straight away, with all her heart.

Out of the blue, she faintly heard a loud bang downstairs that snapped her out of her circling thoughts. Sitting up in her bed in bewilderment, she flinched when she heard the noise again.

The woman jumped out of her bed, biting her lip as a tiny noise of fear escaped her throat. Her hand reached under the mattress to pull out a small 9mm.

Bell opened her room door cautiously. She creeped her head round, once satisfied that everything was all clear she crossed the hall to Adler’s bedroom.

She moved towards the bundle under the sheets, placing her hands on him and shaking vigorously.“Adler, Wake up!” she hissed.

The man’s eyes opened and he shot up without hesitation. Upon seeing the gun in Bell’s hand he quickly hopped out of bed, any grogginess he had from sleep had been wiped away extraordinarily fast. 

“What’s going on?” he responded urgently. Immediately he was pulling a pistol of his own from the beside table. 

“I think I heard someone downstairs,” she whispered. Adler glanced at her and noticed her terror-stricken face and nodded in understanding.

“Alright, stay behind me.”

The two of them made their way down the stairs slowly, Bell cringed as their footsteps creaked on the decaying wood.

Adler slowly rounded the corner and began to sweep the room with unmatched professionalism. After checking the back door was still locked, he examined every room in the downstairs of the house. It was only after he had done all of this he relaxed slightly.

Bell wasn’t satisfied. “What about outside?”

The man silently did as she told him, keeping his patience with a sigh. She waited as he walked out the front door, and then moments later walked passed her to check out the back of the house.

“Ah, I think I’ve found the culprits,” he gestured for her to come over and held the door open. 

She rushed over to his position and eagerly poked her head out so she could take a look at what he had discovered.

In the darkness, she could see just a small distance away from them was a tipped over trash can. Three raccoons surrounded it, stood to attention at the sudden intrusion. Her shoulders dropped in relief, the sight of their endearing faces made her smile softly.

“Filthy creatures,” Adler added as they both watched them idly.

“They probably think the same thing about you.”

The man gently nudged the woman back into the house and shut the door behind them.

“I’m sorry,” she groaned, burying her head in her hands ashamedly.

He shook his head. “Don’t worry be, you’re right to be vigilant.”

It may have been from Adler’s kindness, or the toll the long, drawn out the night had taken on her, but in that moment she felt tears start to bubble. She turned away from him, rubbing her burning eyes fiercely.

“Bell.”

The woman ignored him and started to head towards the stairs, only to be halted by his hand around her wrist. “What’s wrong?”

She determinedly shook her head and tried to pull away, not wanting him to witness her in this state. He already had one times too many. Still, she submitted when he pulled her into him. The warmth of him was too comforting to her frazzled nerves to resist.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” He murmured against her hair and the action made her sink into him further.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she whispered back. The woman became light-headed at the feel of him through his thin, cotton t-shirt. She couldn’t help but revel in the hardness of his body, the ridges and lines of his defined muscles. Through her thin silky nightgown she knew he must have felt her nipples protruding into him in return.

“Try me.” The man starting to rub his hands up and down her back soothing and steady.

“I just...” She tilted her head up and stared into his eyes, there was a softness in them she’d never seen before. Bell was mesmerised for a moment. She thought he was so handsome. There was even beauty to be found in his scars. She found herself bewitched by the shape of them, the way they climbed up his face.

“Are you scared?” He pulled back slightly so he could get a better look at her, as if trying to search her face for an answer.

“...more just feeling hopeless, I think.”

Adler nodded slowly in acknowledgment, a melancholy look on his face out of solidarity.

“You’ll make it out of all this.”

“You don’t know that,” she whispered as she started to pull away from him again, but he didn’t let her move.

Adler wrapped his arms around her tighter. Her heart raced at the prolonged period of closeness, her eyes grew heavy as the extent of her arousal started to makes itself known between her thighs. The man let out a small sigh through his nose when he saw her gaze drift from his eyes down to his lips. 

“I’m personally going to see to it that you do,” he muttered giving her a tiny shake. “You hear me?”

She nodded wordlessly, her breathing becoming heavier with every second the two of them spent in this embrace. With a shaky sigh she knew what she had to do. Bell leaned up to press her lips against his, keeping her mouth still at first, just getting the feel for him as she pressed in harder and harder.

Like his hands on her skin, it was the same contrast of soft and rough, his lips were chapped against her plush ones, but for whatever reason she adored it.

Adler steadily took control. He held her up against him protectively as he started to move his lips against hers. The man was skilful when it came to this, his kiss was slow and gentle enough to leave her wanting more, but still deep and passionate enough to weaken her in every way possible.

A hand came to rest on her face, his thumb caressed her cheek in feathery light strokes. He held her so tight that she couldn’t even move, her arms were folded up against her chest rigidly. She didn’t mind him having jurisdiction over her body like this, it made her feel safer than she had in a long time.

Bell knew this was ironic given their past, but it was different this time. This time she had a _choice_.

She gave a breathy moan into his mouth as she felt herself start to throb gnawingly.

To her frustration, when she started to lick at his lips he decided to pull away. He loosened his hold slightly, coming to rest his forehead against hers and closing his eyes as he waited for his breath to return to normal.

The girl was impatient, she eyed him in anticipation and bit her lip to stop herself from doing something humiliating like whining for him to keep going.

The older man shook his head, cupping her face with so much care that she felt she might cry fresh tears. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

It was not surprising to her that he took full responsibility for both of their actions in this way. It was apparent that he thought he was the one who should know better in these situations. Bell mostly found it infuriating, but parts of her couldn’t help but find it noble.

She saw the conflicted look on his face and her chest felt tight as she feared it might be regret. “I want it so badly...” was all she could think to mutter as an attempt to reassure him. “More than anything.”

This makes him let out a small puff of amusement. “You sure?”

“I know what I want,” the young woman insisted, meeting his gaze intensely. “I’ll understand... if you don’t want it too. But don’t push me away because you think it’s for my benefit.”

Adler looked like he wanted to protest those words for a second, but seemingly decided against it in the end. He pulled away from her finally. The coldness of the house attacked Bell once out of his arms, she hugged herself as she watched him make his way up the stairs. “Are you not coming?”

Shaking herself out of her stunned state, she hurried along after him. Her heart thumped aggressively in her ears as she followed.

When they reached his room, he led her in and shut the door behind them.

The reality of it was lost to Bell as Adler pressed her against the wall. He grabbed her face in his hands and pressed a fervent kiss to her lips. She whimpered into it desperately as his tongue spilled into her mouth. Desperate to be as physically close to him as possible, she stood on her tip toes and curved her body into him firmly. Even that didn’t feel like enough.

“Tell me again, Bell,” He panted, as he pulled away to look at her as he spoke. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

With a somehow simultaneously innocent and lust ridden smile, she pecked him on the lips.“I’m 100% sure.”

The man pressed a firm kiss to her temple before lifting her as if she were nothing more than a lightweight inanimate object and laying her down on the kingsized bed. The pale moonlight that creeped in through the curtains cut through the darkness and illuminated their bodies.

Hovering over her, he took a moment to examine her face intently and she wondered if she looked less nervous than she felt.

From the endeared, pitiful smile he gave her, she knew this likely wasn’t the case. “Don’t worry, Bell,” he reassured quietly, stroking her hair from her face. “I’m gonna take care of you, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered shakily.

The man began to pull her loose fitting night gown down her shoulders. She sat up so she could lift the shirt from his back and he assisted her with taking it off him.

The woman took a sharp intake of breath as she caught sight of his bare torso for the first time. After all this time of trying to envision exactly what he might look like under his clothes, here he was.

Being so inundated with the new experience, she couldn’t find the words to tell him how much she loved his body. Instead she met his gaze and slightly scraped her pointed nails down his bare chest and abdomen, hoping he’d understand the gesture.

 _I’m sure he already knows_ , she thought to herself.

Burying his face in the crook of her neck, he pushed himself down onto her carefully, all too aware of their vast size dissimilarities.

She let out a raspy nervous laugh as he started to kiss down her neck excruciatingly lightly, the sensation tickled her. But then he started to kiss the area harder and the gigglesquickly faded to soft moans as he expertly worked his mouth and tongue over her skin.

Her breath hitched in her throat as he pulled the slip down more to reveal her moderately size, perky breasts.

The woman compulsively raised her hands to cover them. Adler shook his head and grabbed her wrists, placing them back down besides her. “Uh uh,” he warned sternly. She wouldn’t try that again.

He ran his hand down one of them. He cursed under his breath as slid a thumb over her erect light brown nipple.

Tearing his gaze away, he pulled her sleepwear down further, exposing her smooth stomach and then her silky white panties that fitted well on her round hips. The man finally slid the clothing off of her completely, tossing it the floor.

“You’re just fucking beautiful,” Adler breathed, as he looked up at her face and then back down at her body, running his hand up and down her with admiration. “You’re too much.”

Bell’s cheeks heated up at his choice of words and the blatant arousal in his voice. Shyness got the better of her and she threw her head back onto the pillow, shutting her eyes so she didn’t have to face him.

She let out a little gasp as Adler suddenly brought a nipple to his mouth. Not wanting to miss the sight, she opened her eyes and looked down at the him. The vision of him doing that to her was almost as amazing as the feeling rippling through her body with every suck and swirl of his tongue.

With a deep moan she threw her hands into his thick hair and ran her fingers through it affectionately. Involuntarily her hips began to buck and roll as the heated pressure from her pussy got too much to handle.

“Adler,” she murmured as he came up to kiss her with a pleased hum. She paused, not entirely sure what to say.

The bedroom encounters in her recent history had been limited. It dawned on her then, Adler was a divorced, middle age man. His experience were likely excessively extensive, for someone like her anyway.

She doesn’t think they had ever been so unequal in an area of expertise.

Pushing back the intrusive, anxiety inducing thoughts, she grabbed his face and pressed her forehead to his. “I want you inside of me.”

“Do you now?” Adler retorted with a cheeky smirk, and she could hear the amusement and hint of smugness in his voice. He had seen right through her bravado.

Not the desired effect, but she couldn’t help but breathe out a laugh when he pecked her nose affectionately. 

The woman started to work at undoing his belt. Much to her chagrin, her hands trembled as she did so. He gently moved them to the side and undid it for her. She stared up at him from under her lashes as she pulled it off. She intended to look serious and sexy but just ended up smiling adoringly.

“I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing...” she whispered to him.

He leaned in to kiss her and pushed her back again gently. She watched wide eyed as he pulled off his pants. Through his briefs she could see how erect he was, the visible size of him daunting to her. “I’m glad there’s still a few things I can teach you,” he murmured huskily into her ear before kissing her cheek.

Bell stomach twisted with a chaotic mix of worry and excitement as she laid there. The man peeled her soaked panties off her, he smoothly nudged one of her legs to the side with his knee.

His brow furrowed with how focused he was as he reached down to spread her slippery folds. Bell wiggled her hips in response, letting out a tender moan and raising her hand to tweak her nipples. “Is there any part of you that isn’t so god damn pretty?” He groaned rhetorically, tilting his head to stare at her sex with fondness. The way he fixated on it made her throbbing increase unbearable, it was begging to be touched now.

His started to tease his index finger up and down the slit slowly, carefully. When she started to squirm he used his other hand to hold her hip down securely. “You’re such a good girl,” he told her lowly, “being so wet for me like this.”

Bell let out a little whine, his silky voice calling her good girl sent shivers down her spine. “I’ve wanted it for so long...” she replied, subconsciously matching his tone.

He hummed sympathetically, beginning to rub his thumb over her swollen clit. “I’m sorry. Girls like you don’t deserve to be kept waiting.”

The young woman’s hips jolted forward at this and he didn’t bother to still her again. “But have you been touching yourself?”

She hardly registered what he said to her, too distracted by the handy work on her pussy.

“Bell,” his voice came again louder this time. She turned her lidded gaze to him, biting her lip to trap her moans.

“Yes I touch myself,” she admitted quietly, gasping slightly and shutting her eyes as he started to massage her with his whole hand.

“Have you been doing that while you’ve been here?”

The woman became more alert at the specific question, exasperated as he pulled his hand away and rested it on her knee. “I have.”

“When was the last time you did it? Tell me.”

“Last night.”

Adler hummed in acknowledgment at this, trailing his hand up to her pussy again. This time he pushed his long middle finger into her without warning and she yelped at the sudden intrusion. “So what do you think about when you play with your pretty little pussy?”

She shut her eyes, the way he asked her these question, with these words, in his sinful, rich voice made her feel so shamefully dirty.

It went against who she was as a person, polite, composed, reserved...But the way it turned her on was undeniable. “You,” she breathed, meeting his eyes. “Always you.”

He paused for a moment, taking in this new revelation. As a reward, he leaned down to capture her mouth in a lazy, sloppy kiss. “Really wish you’d called me in to help.”

The man pushed another finger inside and began thrusting in and out of her, not too fast for the time being, but making sure to hit her g-spot with every stroke. It overwhelmed the woman when he started working her throbbing clit at the same time.

“You do a better job than me,” she managed to whisper between her out of breath moans.

“Of course I do,” he retorted softly. The man removed his fingers without warning and Bell panted, the loss of him inside her far too sudden.

Bell pressed her knuckle to her mouth as Adler lowered himself between her legs. Her stomach did backflips as she suspected what came next.

“I’ve been wondering how you’d taste.”

The older man began peppering kisses across the baby-soft skin of her inner thighs. Finally he pressed one hard right in the centre of her pussy, with that it became too much for her. She clamped her thighs together without thinking.

Adler looked up at her inquisitively. “Don’t you want me to eat your pussy, sweetheart?” He asked in an mockingly sweet voice as he rubbed his hand up and down her leg. “You changed your mind?”

Bell sent him a sheepish smile and parted her legs once again. He grabbed the girls petite thighs firmly and experimentally licked her clit for the first time. She let out a strangled whine, evidently trying, and mostly failing, to restrain her sounds of pleasure.

Without any warning, the man switched from merciful licks to full on sucking. Bell started to thrash under his grip, no longer being able to hold back her noisy, tortured sobs. He hummed a sound of reassurance into her wetness, stroking his thumb against her thigh thoughtfully. 

“Adler...” she wasn’t sure if she wanted to tell him to stop or to never stop. The man didn’t pay attention to how poorly she appeared to be coping, he plunged his tongue into her tight hole anyway.

Her hands reached down instinctively to push his head away, he caught them in his grip and held them firmly. The girl resorted to arching her back dramatically and clenching her eyes shut as he brought her to a staggeringly powerful orgasm.

Small hums continued from her throat as she came down from cumming so enormously. She flinched when he laid one last kiss on her sloppy wet core and sat back up, an affectionate smirk instantly spreading across his lips at the sight of her so feverish.

In return she looked up at him with ab exhausted look of disbelief, unable to think of anything to say to him. He didn’t say anything either, letting the moment of peaceful silence linger.

Soon he leaned over to kiss her, gently pushing his tongue into her mouth so she could taste herself off him. He pulled away from her, grazing a tentative hand over her body as he did.

The man got into position, hovering over her with his large arms either side of her head. “Ready?” He murmured into her ear, kissing it gently as the words left his lip.

The girl nodded, biting her lip and humming her ‘yes’ eagerly. Adler could see the anxious, bewildered look that she was trying to mask and pressed caring kisses across her face. 

“Tell me you’re one hundred percent sure again, Bell,” he said lowly, taking his long, throbbing cock in his hand and rubbing it up and down the length of her dripping slit.

“I’m one hundred percent sure,” she breathed out, letting out a tormented little whimper as she angled her hips upwards. The older man took the invitation and entered her for the first time. Bell gasped and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh my gosh,” she cried out in a high pitched tone.

The woman’s breath was taken away as he pushed into her bit by bit. The contrast of his large size to her tight opening was challenging for them both. It wasn’t long before her bittersweet pain gave way to a pure need for more. The fullness was no longer uncomfortable, it became profoundly satisfying in an instant.

The reality of what they were doing sunk in as he sunk into her, and the thought alone was enough to drive her wild.

Adler uttered profanities under his breath and let out a hyper-masculine grunt as he started to move in and out for the first time, starting with slow, meaningful strokes.

“You feel so fucking good, sweetheart,” the man spoke to her throatily, trying his best to keep the shakiness out of his voice.

He placed a hand under her back to pull her close as he started to speed up his pace. 

”Your pussy’s so perfect, _you’re_ so perfect.” His words gave her full body chills. They urged her to lunge forward and kiss him on his lips searingly.

With him holding her up, every movement he made into her jolted her entire body. As he continued to fuck her increasingly faster she buried her face into the man’s hot neck and let out tiny ecstasy driven screams.

She was about to say something, express how amazing she felt and how overjoyed she was that they were doing this together, but he thrust into her harder and it stopped her in her tracks. All the woman could do from that point was just keep moaning and whimpering tenderly into his ear, chanting his name over and over as he pounded into her unyieldingly.

When her lewd sounds started to get more wild and her finger nails scratched deeper into his back, he rolled them over so she was on top. The woman couldn’t help but let out a giggle at the sudden way he man handled her.

Bell took a moment to position her small body in the right spot over his sturdy thighs. She paused to get a feel for him underneath her, the solidness of his body making her feel secure.

With a determined breath, she raised her hips and grabbed his cock. The man helped her angle it into her opening. The second he felt it inside of her he grabbed her hips firmly, his finger sinking into the plush flesh, and started to thrust upwards for the first few strokes until she found her rhythm. 

The woman cried out with joyful ecstasy as she bounced up and down on him, throwing her head back and sending her hair flying behind her.

Bell stared down at Adler, considering how she must have looked with her fervid expression and slackened jaw. Any feelings of insecurity vanished from her mind when she realised how the older man was gawking at her.

Wild, darkened eyes scanned her body and face frantically, it was as if he wanted to look everywhere at once but couldn’t decide what to focus his attention on. “You look so beautiful riding my cock like this,” he growled, sharply intaking air through his teeth. “I always knew you would.” 

The girl soon started to come undone and tossed her head back again viciously, she knew she was reaching the end when her legs started to tremor under her. “Adler... oh my god I’m-“ she trailed off, the words lost in her throat as she started to struggle to maintain her momentum.

“Come here I’ve got you,” he breathed gravelly, the man found a tight grasp on her small waist and started thrusting into her harder and faster than he had since they started. It made the woman wail out involuntarily and lean over him, digging her nails into his shoulders hard enough to draw blood.

Bell’s whole body shuddered violently as she came, tears came to cloud her vision as she sobbed his name. When she was done, the exhausted girl slumped onto him and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, burying her face into his neck as he kept thrusting into her.

He lifted her off his cock with an audible pop and gingerly pushed her down onto the bed next to him. She moaned encouragingly as he jerked himself a few times to finish on her body. Streams of his thick cum spewed over her stomach and breasts.

“...wow,” she breathed dreamily as she laid there in her post-orgasm bliss. “Gosh.”

Slowly she descended into a quiet fit of giddy giggles, burying her face in her hands as she did.

He looked over at her and couldn’t help but smile wryly at the sight. “The feelings mutual sweetheart.”

He produced a pack of tissues from the cabinet next to the bed and began to wipe her body of his cum, she stared up at him contently as he did. “Can we do it again?”

Adler raised his eyebrows at her as he threw the tissue in the waste basket. “What?” He said coming to hover over. “Now?”

“Yes, let’s do it again...” she giggled, wrapping her legs around his waist. “Right now.”

-

It was 3 hours later she laid with her head on his chest. The room now basked in soft sunlight as dawn approached. One of Adler’s hands idly stroked Bell hair, the other held a cigarette, after asking her if she minded.

“Adler?” She spoke sleepily.

He hummed in response, glancing down at her.

“Do you think this is the most psychotic situation anyone has ever been in?”

Adler stubbed out his cigarette in the nearby ash tray. “Honestly kid,” he began, wrapping both his arms around her. “I think It must be pretty up there.”

She had been expecting a different answer, she glanced up at him with a sulky look and he responded with a snicker, raising a hand up to pet her cheek. “Look at you,” he muttered. “God knows how I kept my hands off you for so long. I’m a saint.”

Bell suppressed a laugh and shook her head. “You’re many things, but you’re definitely not one of those,” she kissed his finger tips near her face. “But neither am I, so it’s okay.”

-

🏃🏽‍♀️


	9. Caught

***Note: if you guys have any requests or anything that you’d like someone to write for you, throw them at me in the comments! I’d love to practice my writing in between working out the plot and scenes for this fic, which I definitely am going to see to the end if my life depends on it. Obviously about the BOCW characters as that’s what I’m hyper fixating on at the moment 🙂(And I love that, I love my mind being that way, obsessing over a COD campaign mode that’s been out for several months?!! good for me!!🥴) alright bye, I know this ones shorter than the rest but I’m planning on updating sooner than usual, thanks so much for reading!***

**-**

“We can’t stay for long,” Adler told Bell as he pulled into the parking lot. “We’ll just stretch our legs a little, get some fresh air, and then we need to get back.”

The girl didn’t answer him, intent on not paying attention to any of his cynicism. She stepped out of the car instead, one of her high heeled boots slipped slightly on the icy ground beneath her making her let out a tiny yelp.

“Careful,” the man quipped, she had her back to him but she could hear the smirk on his face. The girl turned to give him a half joking glare.

As she regained her balance she pulled her long coat around herself as the brisk winter wind stung her bare cheeks and whipped her thick curls around. Not minding in the slightest, she breathed out contently at the sight of the massive park. Fields of grassy land stretched out ahead of them. Even if the sky was a bleak sepia, the way the russet coloured leaves decorated the ground in contrast brought her solace. “Lovely day,” she commented, grinning at the man as he locked up the car.

“It’s freezing,” he replied plain-spokenly.

“I prefer cold weather,” the two began to walk next to each other closely, the sleeve of her black wool coat brushing against Adler’s beige trench one.

“Well, you’re Russian.”

“Oh yes, sometimes I forget that,” she admitted quietly. The man didn’t respond, but Bell caught the way his jaw tightened at her admission. 

“I get stressed in the heat,” she continued, eager to keep the conversation light hearted. “It can get very warm here in the summer time. You and I... we’ve only ever been with each other in cold weather, haven’t we?”

The girl was aware she was rambling now, but sometimes his silence made her jittery no matter how much she attempted to be content with it. At these times it was a natural instinct to fill in the jarring holes he left in their conversation. Now he raised his eyebrows and nodded in acknowledgment at the girls observation, and that was something at least.

The pair soon came to a bench, the rotting wood dry and cool to the touch as they sat on it, only a slight distance between their bodies. They watched the joggers, dog walkers and general people mulling around in big coats like there’s.

“Do you come here a lot?”

Bell nodded at the question. “I did. I use to have this...”

Adler tilted his head at her with a patient curiosity when she hesitated.

“This boyfriend.”

The man smiled wryly at this, facing straight again as he listened to her continue. “He use to bring me here a lot.”

“And where is he now?”

The girl shook her head defeatedly. “I don’t know. He didn’t want me after a while, he said I was... difficult.”

He gave her a sympathetic lopsided smile, placing his hand over hers, the leather of both of their gloves rubbed across each other smoothly. “He might be onto something there.”

She snatched her hand away at those words but he pulled it back and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “It’s good to be difficult,” he soothed. “You know what they say, easy come, easy go.”

Bell sighed wistfully. “It’s never easy go. I get far too upset when people leave.”

A deep noise in agreement sounded from the man’s throat, a bit too quickly for her liking. She understood it, he was critical of her heightened emotions and sentimentality. 

Deciding she’d like the conversation to be turned away from her, she changed the subject bluntly. “What about you? Tell me about your wife.”

“ _Ex_ wife.”

“Alright, _ex_ wife.”

Adler paused to consider her words before responding. “Why? So you can track her down and skin her alive?”

Bell let out a small laugh, smiling down at her lap. “I’m just curious as to what a wife of yours would be like.”

He fell silent in contemplation for a short while, staring off at an elderly couple accompanied by a pack of small, yapping dogs that echoed through the park. “She was the only one who could make me feel...normal. She still is.”

Bell swallowed down the offence she had taken to this, letting the bitter pressure in her chest linger and wear off slowly. She didn’t want to ruin their time together. One wrong move and he’d shut her out.This openness was a precious rarity that she was adamant wouldn’t go to waste. “So you stopped being normal once you got divorced?”

“In some ways.”

The girl let out an unnoticeable puff of air through her nose as she felt her heart sting. She recognised this feeling as one she felt so wholly whenever it came around. Jealousy. Always excruciating, infuriating, all-consuming.

It was justified. To be the woman that Russell Adler felt _normal_ with, that was a great feat.

She probably made him feel the opposite, she noted miserably.

“Do you miss her?” Bell asked, careful to keep the bitterness out of her voice, leaning back and feeling her shoulder blades press against the back of the rock hard bench.

Adler glanced over at her, she could only just make out his eyes squinted thoughtfully through his shades. She doesn’t think she had ever seen him in such stark daylight, so close up. It had usually been dark, dank environments that they were in each other’s company. It was crystal clear now, the starting of a stubble, his wrinkles were deeper than she realised. The girl found it distinctively charming. 

Under different circumstances, if such public displays of affection weren’t off the table, she might have reached up to run a hand over his jawline adoringly. For now her hands remained at her side. 

“We still talk from time to time,” he spoke, snapping her out of her daze, he reached into his coat pocket to take out a cigarette carton. “She’s never given me much of a chance to miss her. She still worries and cares... much more than I deserve.”

Bell was silent in contemplation at this, staring at her boots as she kicked aroundthe crisped up, dead foliage beneath her. The girl’s gut wrenched as it dawned on her. “I don’t get it then,” she gave in finally. “Are you separated or not?”

Adler chuckled easily, the cigarette between his lips jolting up and down. Bell crossed her legs belligerently, angling her body away from him in response. “We just grew apart, that doesn’t mean we hate each other. You’ll understand when you’re older-“

“Older. Yes, I know,” she cut him off quickly in a huff.

That shut him up for a moment, shaking his head as he brought the cigarette down and up to his lip once more. “Don’t you think you have enough on your plate without worrying about my ex wife, kid?”

“I’m not worried,” she stated primly, picking at her stockings on her legs. When she glanced at him and caught the hint of amusement on his face she had to fight back a smile of her own. “I’m _not_.”

Sliding a hand over to squeeze her thigh fleetingly, he stood up. “Come on, field trip over.”

Bell followed his lead, both of them strolling leisurely in affable silence. She looked on, noticing the car was a good distance away and found herself grateful for that. The girl would have preferred to stay at the park with Adler until dusk, but an extra five minutes while they walked to the car would have to do.

“Thank you for this,” she told him, cutting into the silence. “I needed it.”

“You were right, it was nice to get out for a while,” he responded.

She hums in agreement, staring off ahead as she shoved her hands into her pockets.

“It was nice...” he continued, staring at her intently now as they walked. “To spend some time with you.”

The girl returned his gaze, her big eyes brightening with surprise, a slow delighted smile graced her face. “You really think so?”

“Of course I do,” he chuckled. “I kind of like being around you. Surely you’re starting to get that by now?”

“Mm... maybe I’ll need more convincing.”

Adler drove them back, content with indulging Bell in her small talk as he kept an eye out for possible followers. In the end he had stopped listening to her fully, drifting in and out of the conversation, but she didn’t seem to be bothered.

The idyllic atmosphere was harshly dashed as they pulled up to the house and spotted a familiar looking black car with an even more familiar looking man inside. The surprise brought Bell back to reality, a new sense of trepidation filling her.

From here she could see his bald head shining through the window. As always his eyes were shielded by his sunglasses, but his lips pressed into an impatient thin line gave away his mood.

“Don’t look so worried,” Adler spoke, his tone firmly reassuring. “Let me do the talking, okay?”

She nodded and go out the car. Hudson sprung out of his own vehicle with a resounding slam and stormed up to them tensely. “Where have you been?”

Adler strolled past the man, Bell trailed along after him, determinedly not making eye contact with the other man.

“Just needed to run some errands,” Adler told him.

“Errands?”

All three of them walked into the house, Bell had half a mind to retreat upstairs to hide until the visitor was gone, but sensed it wouldn’t be the right action take. “We’re here now,” Adler responded straight-forwardly. “What do we owe the pleasure?”

The bald man looked like he wanted to push the matter further but dropped it with a fed up sigh. “An update on the Perseus agent you captured the other day. Emily? She talked.”

The girl was fully alert now, looking between the two CIA men, impatient for them to continue. “Is she...” she paused, remembering she couldn’t show too much concern, she was at risk of seeming like sympathiser. “What happens with her now?”

As soon as Hudson fixed his gaze on her she knew he could see straight through her. “Shes _fine_ , her family are pretty much aristocracy, they’ve managed to weasel her out of it. As I’m sure you’re very happy to know.”

Adler cut in promptly to save Bell from Hudson, not giving any chance for animosity to develop between the two. “What’s been said?”

The man handed him a cassette tape and then a thin paper folder. “We haven’t exactly hit the jackpot. She revealed who hired her, it was just one of the lackeys not even too far up the food chain. That’s why we believed her when she told us she hadn’t even met Perseus.”

Bell eyed the new evidence now in Adler’s hands and nibbled her lip restlessly. The girl had been driving herself insane with constant imaginings of Emily’s fate. She just wished Hudson would disappear so she could consume the new information word for word.

“One more piece of the puzzle,” Adler replied, flipping open the folder and raking his eyes over the first page.

“She did reveal the location of the guy and his gang who recruited her. I’ve called Mason and Woods, you’ll raid the joint in the next few days,” the CIA operative told him, already getting ready to leave.

Adler nodded along.

“It was good that you could get her with no fuss,” he added dryly. “Probably bought us a lot of time.”

At these words the man shut the file he was observing and gestured towards Bell by nodding his head at her. “You have her to thank for that.”

Hudson tensed at this, inhaling agitatedly as he glanced over at the woman.

Bell shook her head at him quickly, a small uptight small coming to her face in return. “It’s alright sir, I don’t need thanking.”

He didn’t appreciate the peace offering, instead crossing his arms over his chest and angling his head towards her pointedly. “You’re on our side now, it’s the bare minimum. We don’t thank, we _expect_.”

The young woman nodded, silent as she waited for him to turn his attention away from her.

“Is that all, Hudson?” Adler asked dully.

He nodded and to Bell’s alleviation he started to leave. She stood in place as Adler saw him to the exit, listened to them say their cold goodbyes and then the door slam shut. When Adler came back in she breathed out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

“Don’t you worry about him,” Adler reassured, ruffling her hair softly as he passed her.

Bell followed him to the kitchen area slowly. “He’s just doing his job,” she spoke, still uneasy. 

The older man quirked his lip at her as she sat down near him. “Very good of you to see it that way.”

He opened the case file up onto the table, she leaned in quickly so she could read it too, tucking her hair behind her ear so it wouldn’t obstruct her view. “Besides,” he continued. “I’m in no position to judge him.”

The woman shifted her eyes from the paper and peeked up at him with brief confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Having sex with you is much worse than talking to you like shit, from a professional standpoint that is.”

She let out a breathless laugh, shaking her head in disbelief at his words. “Well, I definitely prefer the...” she trailed off as he started to grin smugly.

The girl tutted and leaned away from, not being able to stop the enlivened smile on her face. 

Adler started to organise and move around the paper on the table. “And I’ll tell you, if he won’t,” he began again, “You did so good on that mission. Me and Park weren’t expecting you to pull it off, we knew how tricky it would be. But you came through, no problem. I was so proud of you.”

The welcome surprise of him being so sweet to her made a mellow warmth swirl in Bell’s chest. She couldn’tresist leaning over and placing a hand on his jaw and pressing a deep kiss to his cheek with a light affectionate hum.

The moment of passion was ended abruptly, he caught her off guard by suddenly pushing her away. The girl sat back in her chair and stared at him questioningly, searching his face for answers, but then her heart sank with unadulterated dread as she clocked Hudson stood on the other side of the room. Looking right at them.

“Well, isn’t this just adorable.”


	10. Runaway

“I forgot to mention, the BND have been complaining about her not being around enough,” Hudson spoke, fresh venom spilling into his voice. “I was going to suggest she split up her time more evenly to keep them off our backs.”

Bell watched wretchedly as he stalked towards them, sizing them both up. The black glass rectangles that accentuated his face were somehow capable of expressing plenty of malice. “But now I think I understand why she favours the CIA so much. The loyalties always were a little too good to be true.”

The girl bristled at the way he referred to her in third person as he stood just inches away from her. She didn’t dare look at him, or Adler either for that matter. Instead she kept her gaze trained on the floor, forced to study the filthiness of it.

“Bell,” her ears flinched as the man seated next to her spoke finally.

She glanced up, her breathing subtly erratic as her widened eyes pleaded with him: _do something, do anything_. “Start going through Emily’s evidence.”

Adler stood now, toe to toe with his fellow CIA agent. “You got something you need to get off your chest, Hudson?”

The man in question glared at Bell and then back at the other man before he stormed off towards the backdoor, so powerfully it created a brief breeze throughout the room. Adler started after him immediately.

“I’m so sorry,” Bell peeped as soon as she knew Hudson was out of ear shot.

He offered the girl a tight yet consoling smile, it did nothing to dispel her fears. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” She watched as Adler walked outside, softly closing the door behind him.

Sitting helpless proved itself unbearable. After what felt like a sizeable amount of time, the girl also rose from her seat and made her way towards the door, the thought running through her mind that he shouldn’t face this alone.

Maybe she’d even conjure up a way to shift all the blame onto her, after all it was near enough impossible that Hudson could think any lower of her. It was a pathetic resolve to make herself the scapegoat in this instance, she was aware, but right now she was simply desperate for anything to mollify the situation.

Just as her hand closed around the chilled steel of the door handle, the door swung back open, forcing her to flinch back against the kitchen wall. The two CIA agents walked in, their bodies displaying rigid tension. She opened her mouth to speak but it was a futile effort as Hudson breezed past her, seconds later she heard the door slam resoundingly. Just like that, he was gone again. 

Adler slowly turned his attention to Bell as she stood frozen in shock still, not having moved from her position. Her hand rubbed at her chest in an attempt to soothe herself.

“What happened?” She asked eventually, anxiously knitting her eyebrows together.

The man shook his head in a way to deflect her concern. “Nothing.”

“What did you say? What did he say?”

When he stubbornly ignore her continuous questions she sighed with exasperation and came to stand in front of him, looking up at him intently. “What’s going to happen, Adler?”

He placed his hands on her shoulders, his fingers pressing against her bones and skins as his fingers crept under the collar of her shirt. “You have nothing to worry about. It’s really none of his business.”

The girl gaped at him as he walked away from her and sat at the kitchen table, beginning to arrange the papers and files in preparation to read through them. She followed him, determined not to let him end the conversation.

“What do you mean it’s none of his business? Of course it’s his business.” She pressed on, her voice breathy and high with anguished disbelief.

“No,” he corrected nonchalantly, inhaling a recently lit cigarette lazily and leaning back in his seat. “I don’t see any real reason why it is.”

Bell steadied herself by gripping onto one of the chairs, staring off into space in stupefaction.

“Agents,” he continued, waving his cigarette around in a dismissive gesture, “they hook up with each other all the time. The only issue for him is that it’s you and me.”

Her worries were interrupt by a mild interest now. “Have you “ _hooked up_ ” with other agents before?”

He snorted quietly turning his attention away from her to lean over the table again. “... maybe on the odd occasion.”

The girl gave a cynical hum as she stared at Adler thoughtfully.

Now she had to consider, was it really none of Hudson’s business, or was he shielding her from the brunt of it all? Bell suspected that he would find it more straight forward to deal with the problem alone, and not have her fret herself into a hot mess.

He did, she was certain, perceive her as a nervous wreck already.

“C’mon kid, that’s enough theatrics for one day, do some work for me,” he broke her out of her thoughts, his tone only half playful.

She reluctantly dropped the subject, sitting herself down in the seat with a defeated exhale. Her thin fingers grazed her over the typed up words over the paper, making a fruitless attempt to concentrate.

Before she could begin to dwell on the possibility of the changes that would take place between her and Adler, the man’s hand snaked out to absently brush against her cheek, not even looking at her as he murmured. “I mean it...don’t concern yourself.”

And with that, what had happened just a short while ago seem to blur into something less ghastly. 

\- 

The next day, Bell sat in her office. She shifted through contentment to nervousness and then nothing at all in a cycle. The deceiving winter sun filled the small room with a soft golden filter that complimented the solitude perfectly, it played a small role in pacifying her.

The peace made focusing on work a slightly easier task. It wasn’t that Adler and his team were particularly noisy individuals, but she preferred doing tasks without sharp, inquisitive eyes watching her like a hawk. Still, her mind was currently prone to distraction as it sporadically drifted over Adler and the delicate state of affairs with Hudson.

As convincing as Adler had been in his assurance that nothing particularly ground breaking had took place, something deep in her gut spoke to her mind and told her that this wasn’t the case.

Roth invited himself in at lunch hour. He sat opposite her without a word or polite hesitation. She decided it was a pleasant respite, it was unusual that she had the privilege of this sort of companionship

“So, you wanna go get some lunch?”

Guilt flicked in her chest at the man’s zeal. She wasn’t keen on disappointing him, but the thought of Adler’s disapproving face was enough to make up her mind promptly.

The girl reached into her bag and pulled out a food container, shaking it at him jollily.“Salad for me today.”

Her follow BND agent made a point of scrunching up his face up dramatically at the sight. “So you’re missing out on delicious food and coffee for a bunch of _leaves_?”

Bell laughed openly, entertained by his exaggerated antics. “I’m trying to watch my figure.”

“Your figure looks perfectly fine to me,” he huffed.

She half expected him to flush red from his ears to his neck and begin to stutter and clumsily attempt to backtrack, but there was none of that. He continued to sit there as if he never even said anything at all, so the girl let the comment pass by untouched.

“Does having lunch with me really mean that much to you?”

Roth drummed his fingers on her desk in thought for a moment and then ran his hands over the photo frame on her desk that had a picture of her cat in it. “You’re my only friend here, Winter.”

A warm grin spread across her lips at that admission. “I don’t think that’s true. All the women like you... all the men are probably jealous.”

Despite her jovial tone, the man’s face grew sullen before he shook his head and became neutral again. “No ones jealous of me, I have a lot to prove.”

She wasn’t confident on how to respond, so she hummed in acknowledgment.

“But, you’re right. The women here do like me,” he leaned back in his chair now, a wolffish smile suddenly present.

Bell smiled fondly at the faux cockiness. “Honestly,” she said finally, “I’m the one no one likes here. You’re fine.”

“I like you,” he responded firmly, fiddling with one of his cuff links. “You’re... different to most people. In a good way.”

Bell’s smile softened to one of sad discretion. The prospect that she didn’t assimilate into her new environment as well as she’d prefer was always a thought that lingered at the back of her mind. 

She was acquainted with the fact that people usually perceived her to be a silly sort of woman, the type who daydreamed chronically and exhibited the sort of unhandy shyness that got in the way of life. 

Often, people simply didn’t have the patience to decipher her quietness. Given the nature of her reality, that could work in her favour. Yet on some days, she couldn’t deny it stung her. “I’m glad you’re my friend,” she concluded. “I don’t have many either.”

The girl leaned over in her chair to open one of her drawers, after digging around briefly she found what she had been looking for. She slid a chocolate bar wrapped in a gleaming gold wrapper over her desk. “I don’t feel like going out, but you can still eat lunch with me... if you want to.”

He took it with a gentle amusement on his face as she opened her lunch box and started to skewer the greens with her folk.“Thanks Winter.”

-

It came as a surprise to Bell when she walked out of the building that evening to see Sims waiting in his own vehicle as opposed to Adler.

“Bell,” he greeted with a nod when she entered the car. “Sorry, I’m your designated chauffeur today. Doc’s tied up with some call from Langley.”

She shot him a tight smile, suddenly feeling self conscious in front of the man. “I’m sorry you had to come out all this way just for me... it’s this silly rule he has.”

Sims started to drive off. “I know it seems like a lot, but we have to take it seriously. In this game, when someone knows too much, it often doesn’t end well for ‘em. Someone could snatch you away in a second, that’s all it takes.”

The girl nodded at the plain-spoken statement, slightly disappointed that even he chose to lecture her about safety instead of even so much as pretending to see the situation from her point of view. She opted not to let it get under her skin, Sims would back Adler up through thick and thin, she knew this.

“And besides,” Sims added as an afterthought. “I think he has a soft spot for ya. He’d never admit it though.”

Bell couldn’t help herself then, letting out a small giggle and shaking her head as she stared off out the window, beginning to watch the streets of Berlin fly past. “Is that really what you think?”

The man driving the car simply shrugged in response, an easy smirk coming to his face that manifested in his voice. “Nah, he probably can’t stand your soviet ass. But he’s in no position to hold a grudge. I just assume you two kind of, I don’t know, came to a truce.”

“A truce,” she repeated quietly. “Mm, you could call it that.”

The two of them continued the car journey, they exhausted all options of small talk and faded into silence. When they finally pulled up to the location, Sims turned to her. “I’m not coming in today, got other business to take care of.”

She nodded and unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Oh, and just so you know, Hudson’s in there.”

Bell snapped her head to him, the unmissable appalled look on her face made him raise his eyebrows at her unamused. “One of us you haven’t made amends with...”

“No,” she responded simply, reeling herself back. “I just wasn’t expecting it, he was already here yesterday.”

“Well, they’re probably trying to get the logistics of that next big mission ironed out.”

The logical explanation provided little to put the girls mind at ease, she heaved in to steady her nerves and went to get out the car. Sims leaned over just as she was about to shut the door on him.

“With Hudson, just stay out of his way, he’ll stay out of yours,” he advised, Bell sent him an appreciative nod upon seeing he was genuinely trying to be helpful.

“Thank you, see you soon.”

She didn’t wait to watch the car drive away, already turning on her heels to head towards the door. _Stay out of his way_. 

Sims simple words had somehow inspired her as a plan hatched in her mind. Sneak in, get upstairs and lock herself in her room until he was gone. 

With that set in stone, she ever so gently pushed her key into the lock and opened the door. She edged herself in, careful not to let the door squeak, taking off her boots as soon as she was in to avoid them clicking on the floor.

Bell smiled to herself wryly at the situation, this was a full stealth operation and to say she felt ridiculous was an understatement.

If they had heard her come in they showed no evidence of it. There was an eerie silence throughout the house, then the distinct sound of a steel lighter striking the airfollowed by the soft noises of inhaling and exhaling of cigarettes from two mouths.

Bell reasoned that if there were smoking together, they might just be on more civil terms than she thought. 

As she headed towards the stairs, she heard their gruff American voices begin to sound out.

“I mean, I would expect this from... Mason, maybe even Woods, but you?” Hudson spoke, his tone calm but still dripping with vexation. “I thought you only had one thing on your mind, the mission... And we’re in Berlin, Adler, you couldn’t get you rocks off with any other woman?”

Involuntarily her eyes rolled back in her head at this insinuation, but she swallowed back her disgust as she began to ascend the stairs. She knew she’d be better off not hearing this rhetoric.

“Wasn’t it you who wanted me to “keep her sweet”?”

Bell paused upon hearing Adler’s voice, the sentence stopping her in her tracks. She paused her breath to hear the two as clearly as possible.

They had her undivided attention now, whether they were aware of it or not. She delicately lowered herself down to sit on the step, gripping onto the banister with knuckle whitening strength.

“Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. I would never suggested you becoming some sort of _honeypot_ ,” he spat. “Has it not ever crossed your mind that she could be the one taking advantage of _you_? How do you know she hasn’t got you right where she wants you? Wrapped around her little commie finger.”

Adler chuckled now, the blatant mean-spiritedness of it that made her stomach churn.

“I know you’d love that to be true,” he responded eventually. “But no, that’s not the case.”

“You don’t know that, don’t forget what she is.”

“Don’t forget what I am,” he retorted swiftly. “It’s gonna take more than some pretty young girl to get one over on me, Hudson.”

Hudson snorted and paused for a moment before persisting. “So what are you doing?”

Bell clenched her eyes shut as she braced herself, she had her forebodings that what would come next would be a devastating, world changing sort of bombshell. A large part of her wanted to cover her ears, run upstairs, forget she had heard anything at all.

Out of all the occasions she had eavesdropped on the agents she worked alongside, this time she had hit the jackpot, discovering mind shattering secrets that gave new significance to the idea that ignorance was bliss.

“I’m doing my job.”

”Christ-“ Hudson sighed, his patience clearly depleted.

“You told me if I kept her alive after Solovetsky, I better keep her in check. You doubled down on that when you found out Perseus may have made contact. So why are you bitching to me about all this? You should be glad.”

Quietness ensued as Hudson seemingly failed to find the words to argue back quick enough. He spoke again, distinctly more even tempered, “And you think getting involved with her in that sort of way is the best way to do things?”

“It was never premeditated. She wanted something to happen between us, I decided to use that. It’s resourcefulness.”

Bell bit into her knuckles hard, vaguely registering the pain it brought as tremors began to shake her body.

“Well, I’m sure it’s a great sacrifice for you, really, you must be hating every second of it,” Hudson replied with bitingly dry sarcasm.

“What difference does it make how I feel?”

Hudson disregarded his reply staunchly. “Just tell her to simmer down a little, I don’t want anyone else on the team to catch you two in that position.”

“I don’t need to tell her anything. You scare the shit out of her.”

“Sure, you be good cop, I’ll be bad cop, why not,” came his sour reply.

Bell stood briskly as she heard the scrape of a chair across the floor, becoming light headed and having to steady herself against the wall. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, Adler, for now. You can have your little girlfriend, if it keeps her occupied I suppose it can’t hurt.”

The girl gingerly came back down the stairs to the front door. Her fingers dabbed uselessly around her eyes at the tears that had formed before she began to put her boots back on.

She took a moment, closing her eyes and taking a few steady breaths to conciliate herself. Finally, her hand reached out to the door, simply opening and audibly slamming it shut again in front of her. 

“Hello?” She called out, satisfied with how stable her voice sounded.

The response was delayed, she imagined this was so likely so the mencould exchange a final word about her before she joined. “We’re in here, Bell,” Adler called back.

She headed towards them, and just as she had been picturing them, there they both stood. Hudson gave her a nod so tiny that if she blinked she’d miss it. “Hudson was just on his way out.”

“That’s a shame,” she quipped icily.

He chose not to acknowledge it. “I want everything prepared for that mission, Alex and Mason will be here in a few days.”

Adler nodded his head dismissively as he brought a cigarette up to his mouth. Hudson collected some things and left without ceremony .

When Bell set eyes on the man left in the room, she had to wrestle down the bubbling, rising fury that had stemmed from her prior angst.

He stood there seemingly without a care in the world, no difficulty facing her despite the words he had had in his mouth about her just moments before. It gave the girl an instinctive urge to lunge at him. 

What stopped her was the knowledge of how that would end for her.

“Have you had a good day?” He asked, a friendlier tone of voice came with just the two of them in the room. Recently, the atmosphere was always sweeter when it was just him and her, this time the honeyed pleasantries only served to make her feel sickly. 

“Yes, thank you.”

“You’ve been crying,” the man stated rather than asked.

She nodded, raising a hand to smudge her thumbs across her under eyes, knowing that there was likely some inky residue from her mascara spilling down. “At work, I made a mistake, one of them got a bit angry with me. He started shouting... I just got a bit overwhelmed.”

The younger woman stiffened as he walked round the table to close the gap between them. She forced herself to look up at him, and for the first time in a while, she was thankful for the literal and metaphorical shield his sunglasses provided. The girl wasn’t sure how she’d fare with looking him in the eyes at this time.

“I could have a word with your handler,” he offered, placing his hands around her upper arms, “tell them not to be so harsh on you. You don’t need the... psychological strain right now.”

Bell smiled at him softly, her discrete embitterment made it so it didn’t meet her eyes. “No, that’s alright. I have to deal with these things alone.”

He wordlessly continued to stare down at her, a thumb absently rubbing the silky material of her garment at the back of her arm. “Sometimes I just deal with things by crying,” she continued upon being scrutinised.

“Well, no shame in it.” The man broke away from her with a parting kiss to her temple.

As soon as he had his back turned, she allowed a perturbed grimace to breakthrough on her face. A sickening thought occurred to her as she watched him. If she hadn’t listened in on Adler and Hudson’s privy discussion, she would have lapped up all his affection and attention, too eagerly and greedily to ever even think about questioning it. That’s how she knew she had to leave.

-

It was 2am when she heard Adler retire to his room, she had turned in at around 10, complaining to the man about fatigue and a headache.

In actual fact she had been plotting. But even now she wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do, the only certainty she was that she would leave tonight. Perhaps winging it from there was the best course of action, she concluded.

She waited another hour, imaging that was long enough for the man to have fallen asleep. The girl listened at his door, wishing to herself that he wasn’t such an unusually quiet sleeper. No snore or even deep breathing came to reassure her he was knocked out for the night. 

In the end she decided to brave it, swinging her backpack round her shoulder with ease, she had packed light. She tip toed down the stairs, her eyes glued to her white sneakers as she side step and manoeuvred the spaces that she knew from experience created an infuriatingly loud creaking.

Once out the door, she looked back at the drab interior of the safe house and all the torment washed over her in fresh waves. To think, Bell recollected, she had come to enjoy this eye sore of a place simply because _he_ was here with her.


	11. Shelter

A German gentleman, greying and tetchy in his seniority, set down her third- might have been fourth now she thought about it- cup of tea of the morning. So early in the morning it still appeared the dead of night.

Exhaustion prevented her from acknowledging him immediately. She had been in his company for the best part of two hours now. He, like her, was demonstrably not one for small talk with strangers, and that was a small victory in her mind.

“Do you not have anywhere to go, Miss?”

Judging from his tone, she doubted this question was spurred by wholesome concern. It was more plausible, the man had had his fill of her loitering in his cafe, despite it being empty since her arrival. And then when she took in the state of the place, a wash of various shades of beige and smelling unmistakably like a hospital, a David Bowie hit of yesteryear slurring through a busted radio in the background and doing him a great injustice, she confidently guessed it never saw a great variation of faces to begin with.

If purgatory were a place on Earth this would be a fair contender, Bell had mused.

“I’m sorry, Sir, at the moment I don’t.”

A thick noise of discontentment resonated in his throat. “I know of a youth hostile not too far away. We get teenage runaways hiding out here all the time. Convenient place to stop I suppose, it being the middle of no where.”

There was only one word of the statement Bell fixated on. “I’m not a teenager.”

“Yet still you are clearly running away,” he sniffed. “And seem every bit the pouty little girl.

Mental depletion proved itself convenient in that moment, it numbed effectively against his cutting quips. Even allowing her to be the unprovoked boorishness down to him being too archaic and set in his ways to know any better. Unzipping her backpack and digging around haphazardly, the girl produced a fist full of bank notes and placed them on the table.

Despite her indifference, she was well aware the moment a pensioner called her a pouty little girl would be the moment she’d have to move on. “Do you have a phone? I just want to call a taxi.”

He opened his mouth to answer that, but was hindered by the clear-cut hum of a car engine pulling up outside. Bell surprised herself with her auditory acuteness, she knew immediately what car that was - _who’s_ car that was.

“If she’s not in here we’re calling it in.”

“We’ll call it when I say it’s time, Park.”

Park and Adler. Tones more bitey with each other than usual, her causing trouble for them inevitably driving a vaster rift between the two.

Her heart rate spiked, she shot her head round to the senior man, eyes wide in pleading. “Help me, those people, they’re after me,” she breathed, and clutching the man’s arm for good measure, a played up show of desperation. He looked down at her hands imperviously. “Please.”

Letting out a theatrical heavy sigh, he nodded his head towards the rear of his establishment.

The girl scurried in that direction, retreating into the unlit back rooms.She felt around blindly until she found the backdoor.It was predictable to her that it didn’t open, she jiggled the handle a number of times more but to no avail. A wail of despair threatened to escape her as she slumped down in the corner. 

“Good morning,” Adler voice, in spotless German, reaching her ears was enough for her to bite back any noise.

“Morning.”

“We were wondering if you could help us.” Park’s German was a touch shakier. Fluent still, of course, this was Helen Park and inadequacy in any shape or form was improbable, but any native German could tell it was not her first language.

“Oh?”

“Yes yes, you see we’re looking for someone, our friend, she’s in a bad way.”

“So sorry to hear that.”

“We were thinking that she might have stopped by here?”

The cafe owner hummed garishly in apparent consideration, and she cringed internally because he wasn’t a good actor by anyones standards. And she knew that even if he were, the two of them could spot drivel from a mile away. “What does she look like?”

“Young, small build, long curly hair, olive skin tone,” Park listed off. “Ring a bell?”

“Yes actually, I remember her. She was here just an hour ago, came a few minutes after I opened.”

 _Smart man_ , Bell reasoned to herself, she knew it was better to throw them off the scent rather than act entirely clueless.

“Shit,” Park hissed, switching back to English sharply. “I told you we should have checked here earlier.”

“Settle down,” came Adler’s stoney retort. “Did she mention anything about where she was going?”

“No sir, I didn’t care enough to ask.”

There was a temporary cessation in the conversation, she grew jittery, imagining exactly how the cogs would be meticulously turning in Adler’s mind.

“If she comes back, or you remember anything, will you give us a call on this number?”

“I’d be happy to help.”

The girl’s shoulders slumped down in sweet relief at the prospect of them leaving-

-But then, permitting herself to believe it would be as simple as that was naivety on her part. “Oh, Sorry to ask, but can I use your bathroom?” Adler chimed in again.

That was a system shock, twisting dread and panic inside of her. There was another momentary paused before the elder man spoke again. “Urrr, yes. But I’ll warn you it’s not in a pleasant state.”

Scrambling now, Bell’s eyes raced around her surroundings, straining in the darkness,until she found the most substantial hiding spot - a fridge. Its saving grace being that it was currently powered off.

“I’m in no position to be picky, believe me.”

She didn’t have time to second guess her physical well being, opening the door to it and thanking the universe that it was completely empty. She began to firmly tuck herself inside, ignoring her bones being knocked about, how her knee cramped at the unhealthy angle she had bent it at to make herself as compact as humanly possible.

Subtle footsteps clicked across the concrete just as she was situated in her hiding spot. Slow, spaced out, purposeful - typical of his usual movements.

They stopped, and she heard him open a cupboard and then shut it. Next, he walked near her, the only thing separating the two of them now was a refrigerator door.

She imagined him as she sat crumpled up in the pitch black, conjuring pictures of him squatting down, tilting his head to peer underneath desks, behind boxes, half expecting to find her curled up and cornered, indistinguishable from a preyed upon animal. Cat and mouse was closer to reality than metaphor in this instance.

At last, she heard his footsteps fade away, she let out the breath she had been holding in.

“Thanks for that,” Adler told the man.

“Please do contact us if you hear anything,” Park added. 

Bell waited a while longer, even when she could no longer hear their voices, even after she faintly heard the engine sound again outside.

“Young lady?” The cafe owner called now, clicking on the lights.

She kicked the door open, taking his voice as the all clear signal, crawling out and promptly picking herself up off the floor.

“I’m sorry, I forgot that I hadn’t unlocked that door today.”

“It’s fine,” she muttered, brushing herself off, yellow dust evident against the navy blue of her puffer jacket. “Thank you.”

She regarded him now, stood with his arms crossed and a surprisingly bored look on his face that suggested this was a regular occurrence. All those _teenage runaways,_ she remembered. “Can I have that?” She nodded towards the piece of paper in the man’s hand, the one Adler must have given him. 

He handed it over with a shrug, and she took it from him, examining the numbers scrawled across before shoving it in her Jean pocket. 

“Striking pair your friends, like Berlin’s answer to Bonnie and Clyde.”

A bitter puff of a laugh emitted from Bell. If it were Bonnie and Clyde pursuing her, instead of Adler and Park, she might have had better odds.

-

Bell arrived in the city centre of Berlin, the morning had adequately turned into daylight at this point, but instead of darkness it rained down now, a vicious and all consuming breed of downpour.

“I’d try and get to shelter if I were you, miss,” her taxi driver had called over the pelting of raindrops on the pavement as she opened the car door.

The wind carried it and whipped it across her face and body. The car had not even pulled off before her cheeks were slick and her hair was saturated. “Lovely,” she uttered to herself, smoothing her curls back and pulling the hood of her outerwear over her head.

Bell took in her surroundings, the first thing occurring to her was the emptiness. Near silence on the streets of Berlin was nothing to bat an eye at at this time of day, the weather had probably ushered the odd few early birds back into their homes.

Bell wished she had something resembling a plan. The impulsive, overwhelming urge to get away took priority over common sense.

In her minds eyes, she began to list options, possibilities, choices and strictly no goes.   
She knew her apartment was a ten minute walk from here. _That would be the first place they’d look._

The BND building wasn’t far either, but she wasn’t due to go in today. Bell knew they would be sullenly unamused with her wandering in, dripping coat and sodden sneakers, asking if she could do some work all so she could hideout in her office. _That would probably be the second place they look she concluded._

A few stragglers passed her, gave her puzzled glances as she stood there in the rain seemingly staring at nothing at all. A smartly dressed man, suit and tie and no-nonsense umbrella in hand, likely on his way to work, reminded her of someone. _Roth._

The woman drifted to a few weeks back, when they had been out on a walk at noon. He had vaguely pointed out his apartment building to her, making a point of telling her it was “nicer on the inside than the outside”.

And he wasn’t working today. So that decided it. 

The sky high apartment building was tucked away in one of the quiet, discrete corners of the city and she was all too aware that that was a luxury. To be in the city, but out of the gritty, raw thick of it, that was the happy medium.

Bell learned quickly as she approached, Roth had been being modest. The area and building screamed high rent, and begrudgingly she wondered how much more lucrative his position was than her own.

One detail the man hadn’t disclosed was his apartment number, she realised as she stared at the keypad on the outside of the building.

The foreshadowing rumble of thunder sounded from the skies, and that made her mind up for her.

She began to press every buzzer, starting at 1 and working her way up. “Hello, Roth?” She sighed after pressing buzzer number 23.

“Who?” this was a woman’s voice now, shrill and metallic from the speaker.

Bell thoroughly racked her brain, trying to focus against the chattering of her teeth. “Umm...” _What was his name again?_ “Leonard?” She wasn’t even sure if that was it, but it must have been floating around in her subconscious for some reason.

Seeking refuge from a man she didn’t even know the first name of for certain was what suddenly dawned on her, surprised her and then sinked down deep in the pit of her stomach.

Perhaps this idea wasn’t as brilliant as she originally thought.

“Oh yes I do know him actually. He is... number 37? Yes, try that.”

She gushed her gratitude genuinely to the woman, even when she was cut off abruptly.

A shaky breath, both from the nerves and the cold blew from her lips as she pressed the number 37 buzzer. “Hello?” A groggy, miserable voice emitted from the wall, unknowingly rewarding her efforts ten fold.

“Hello!”

Guilt blossomed in her chest as he croaked out to her again. “Who is this please?”

“It’s Winter.”

“...As in Sabrina Winter?”

“Yes.”

“... Did you want to come in?”

Bell felt slightly down trodden at the mere fact he wasn’t outwardly thrilled, instantly throwing open his doors like she had idealised he would. But outside of work was a different universe, and if not that, it could always be down to it being 6am on his day off. “Please.”

That was her, quintessentially, she would be the first to hold her hands up to it. Unreasonable, high expectations of people... ones in which she personally had no business having.

Her co worker was waiting in his doorway when she came up.

“Hello you,” the man managed to muster a smile despite outwardly finding her presence surreal.

“I’m so sorry,” she told him lamely, shifting her backpack over her shoulder. “I didn’t know where else to go.

Unmalicious puzzlement furrowed his brow, a visible resounding pity for the woman gradually smoothing it down to a look of peaceful endearment. “I think you better come in then.”

She muttered something of thanks under her breath as she passed him, trudging into the hall way, painfully self-conscious of the squelching that sounded from her shoes as she walked down the hall.

He disappeared into the rooms of the apartment and emerged again with a towel in hand. “You’ve looked better, I’ll be honest.”

 _I don’t remember asking_ , was what she wanted to say, but she had shown up to his home unannounced and was in no position to be anything other than eternally grateful, so it didn’t leave her lips.“Yes... that rain. Terrible.”

Bell took a moment to observe Roth now, green plaid pyjamas bottoms and a wife beater both hung off and fitted to his lanky form simultaneously. She hadn’t realised quite how slender he was when he was suited and booted in work attire.

She shed her coat, whispering useless words of apologies when droplets littered his wooden floor, he simply took it from her and hung it up on a nearby coat rack.

The girl started on scrunching at her locks, already dreading the frizz that would result from it’s drenching. 

“Tea or coffee... I think I am out of milk though,” he threw over his shoulder as he walked into the kitchen.

“It’s alright don’t worry,” she called back, now carefully perching herself on the edge of his sofa, a conscious effort to make as least mess as possible.

“Oh, actually,” he bellowed louder now as he clanged around, opening cupboards and drawers. “I do have a bit of hot chocolate left! The good kind too!”

Instinctively, Bell wanted to call back yes, knowing intimately how soothing the velvety taste and texture of hot chocolate would be. She was paranoid at taking advantage of his hospitality, but she found herself unable to turn it down. “Yes please, thank you.”

“Knew you wouldn’t say no to hot chocolate,” he announced as he came back in, placing the cup down on the nearby coffee table. “Careful, it’s hot.” The sentiment of his words made her smile softly at him, the depth of her appreciation shining through as she did.

Although she had known him for a weighty amount of time by now, the girl was certain she had found out something deeply profound about the German man in this moment.

There was something about the way he fussed with pleasant gestures, ensuring her comfort before demanding an explaination. The unadulterated generosity made a rock harden in her throat, threatening to birth fresh tears.

The sat in silence for a moment, Bell surveyed the living room. She pictured him to live in a _squalor_ , takeout boxes and beer cans splayed out, dirty clothes, stenches of an unwashed male body. But on the contrary, Roth’s apartment looked almost unlived in, there was nothing that immediately gave his personality away. Neutral greys and navys, and no-thrill, rectangular furniture occupied the space.

Perhaps American sitcoms had seeped into her mind, every one she had watched always portrayed young men as brashly messy and chronically unhygienic, and for whatever reason that trope was intended to be perfectly and universally charming and humorous.

She didn’t get it.

“I am sorry to drop in on you like this,” she couldn’t help repeating, bountiful caring gestures couldn’t ease the discomfort she felt on the intrusion.

“How did you even know where I live?” he enquired, as if just realising it were a valid question, his lips jutting out in genuine wonderment.

“You told me,” she replied, giving him a flash of wide eyed judgmental glance, because at the time she had thought it painfully reckless. A BND agent no less.

“Did I? What, even the number?”

She retreated into herself sheepishly at that question, not certain she wanted to tell him that she had woken up all his neighbours also. “I just guessed that part.”

A small incredulous laugh fell from his lips, but straight after, his face faltered slightly as someone else appeared in the doorway.

A girl, seemingly only half awake, shoulder length red hair tousled becomingly from bed. She zoned in on Bell, an instant scowl, no fake niceties to spare. “Hello?”

“Hello,” Bell echoed, clueless as to what else to verbalise, but then threw out feebly, “Sorry if I woke you.”

The stranger stared her up and down in uncontrollable disapproval before turning back to the man in the room. “Roth, what is this girl doing at your apartment at 6:38 in the morning?”

He hesitated, and a searing culpability settled in Bell’s gut once more. She hadn’t offered him an explanation yet, so even if he wanted to be truthful he didn’t have that choice at the moment.

A short menacing growl came deep from the girls throat, her blazing frustration apparent. “I knew you hadn’t changed,” she spat, appalled disgust etching her pretty face. Deciding not to stick around she stomped back down the hall. Bell flinched as she heard things began to slam throughout the home in conjunction with brutal German curses.

Rolling his eyes, as if it were one of their mild inconveniences at the work place, Roth went after her.

Feminine, expressive shouting reached a crescendo as the man’s contrasting hushed, inside voice attempted to smooth down feathers. In the end his tactics hadn’t appeared to work, she stormed out the house, the front door banging shut to conclude the conflict.

He came back in the room shortly after, body slumped on the sofa and eyes dulled as he stared at the wall.

“I’m so sorry,” Bell groaned softly, burying her head in her hands

“Don’t be,” he casually dismissed, snapping out if his drained daze. “If she didn’t get upset about you being here, she’d find something else to be angry about anyway.”

“I didn’t even know you had a girlfriend.”

“That’s because I don’t have a girlfriend,” he smirked at the girl haughtily, a gentle shake of his shoulders at the way she fidgeted and averted her gaze. “It’s meant to be a bit of fun. But she forgot how to have fun somewhere down the line.”

“Maybe she wants to actually mean something to you,“ she retorted, her snappiness unintentional.

Quick regret came as soon as the words left her lips. “It’s none of my business.”

If he had at all been effected by her snipe, he hid it well as he let out a long drawn out yawn. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here, Winter?”

“Do I have to?”

“It would be the courteous thing to do.”

She occupied herself, reaching across to take the mug of now luke warm beverage, her stomach still ached with emotion induced nausea so she sipped it cautiously.

It was a not so subtle stalling technique, so it was all for show when she hummed in appreciation at it, in actual fact she hardly even registered the taste.

“Has it got anything to do with the CIA man that drops you to work everyday?”

Her sudden dry mouth made it feel like the liquid had gone hard and sludgy in her throat. “Yes actually, it does.”

-

Of course, she couldn’t tell him the whole truth. She pieced together fragments from her dilemma to create a censored version of the story.

Perseus was off limits altogether, but still she manage to paint a picture of distrust. One where the CIA man, as Roth referred to him so plainly, and herself, ex Russian spy, had dangerous, tricky unresolved animosity.

Her words evinced a mix of morbid curiosity and deep worry that manifested in faint lines across his forehead.

“He doesn’t want to leave me to my own devices,” she told him, he was deliberately silent when she spoke, face animated with sympathy. “He thinks I’m going to defect back, so he wants to lock me away.”

“Okay but,” a gentle, patient confusion came from him, shutting his eyes and massaging his temples in an attempt to get his head around the whole debacle. “You’ve been working alongside him for quite a few weeks, why are you just running now?”

Bell definitely couldn’t tell him about the sex either. It wouldn’t be a great exaggeration to say if she were forced to choose, she’d rather tell him about Perseus.

She had no place to find his follow up questions pesky, but it didn’t stop her from doing so. Thinking on her feet in this way, painstakingly crafting strategic lies on the spot, took more effort than she was currently psychologically equipped for.

“I came to my senses.”

“Well, thank god for that,” something in Roth’s tone came out more cynical and begrudging. She tried to ignore it, but she could sense it lingering in the air, restrained judgement. “I could have told you he had it out for you from the moment I saw him. But I’m sure you two have history. I’m sure it’s all _very_ complicated and I’d never truly _get it_.”

Bell internally flinched at the change in his demeanour. “You’re right, you wouldn’t.”

Indeed, as far as handsome young men went, her friend was among the friendliest one would be able discover in this world. But she had swept into his home with dramatic tales of fleeing from special agents and she couldn’t blame him for the weariness. But fresh mental wounds were bound to amplify her sensitivity. 

“The thing is, you can’t hide from the CIA, Winter. We’ll need to do something. Talk to people at the BND. Come up with a plan.”

‘ _We’ll_ ’ stuck with her from that sentence, travelling down from her ears to her chest and filling it with both warmth and apprehension. Really, she had no intention of allowing him to be involved to that extent. _Just use him for shelter though, very classy of you_ , she jabbed at herself in self destructive repugnance. Him clumsily planting himself in the middle of the situation would add a new complex layer.

A white knight wasn’t the antidote.

“The BND is basically under his thumb as much as I am.”

“It all went to shit when we let the Americans muddy the waters,” he mused sourly.

She disregarded that, confident in the knowledge that her issues were personal, domestic - perhaps even trivial in the grand scheme of things. International alliances and tensions no longer fit into how she perceived her own turmoil.

Often times she found that looking at the bigger picture was a disorientating task, similar to be dizzied by gazing up at sky scraper for a few seconds too long. Perhaps it was easier to fixate on what Adler had done to her- continued to do to her - rather than stripping back the facade to contemplate exactly why he does it.

 _Freedom and Liberty_ and a whole plethora of buzzwords that made her envision red, white and blue and fireworks and apple pie and every generic American object or person one could imagine. Maybe it was for the president, possible friends, family, maybe it was just money? Was that plausible?

No, because he was frightfully and practically intelligent, he’d be doing something else for more pay and less danger.

For the U.S.A in it’s entirety, helping to maintain its sheer force and dominance of the globe, Bell knew that was the most logical conclusion. That answer however was too anti climatic, too stale for her to accept it without a fight. 

And then she’d have to admit it. Adler had pretended to _want_ her, really want her, all for the sake of his homeland.

Perhaps murdering her on behalf of his country would be slightly more merciful, if not infinitely more dignified.


	12. Children

Slovetsky, peculiarly more vibrant that she remembers, green grass, brighter sun, clearer waters, the glacial air distinctly absent against her skin.

Adler wanders past her, cigarette in mouth, battle gear on, war paint smeared across his face. She prefers him in civilian clothing, the heavy amour and weaponry strapped to his body gave the illusion that he was even further detached from humanity, perhaps he felt that way. The man stared off into the distance now, over the cliff and across the waters.

“Adler,” instinctually she whispered to him. “Adler,” louder when it didn’t stir him.

Bell started towards the man, her hand reaching out to touch his back and then grab onto his arm.And now she was puzzled, because she couldn’t feel anything underneath her fingers, not the cloth of his jacket or the sturdiness of his arms.

She glanced up at him, she thought- no she was certain he had his sunglasses on when she first set eyes on him just a few minutes ago. Now his face was stripped bare. But the exposure of his small, hard set eyes, stormy and chaotic, but also razor sharp and astute, made him anything but vulnerable.

“I knew,” he began finally after it felt as if their time had stretched into hours. “I should have killed you.”

Rage lashed at her and hit her square in the chest. The girl snatched her hand away in response, aggressively. Something deep down inside of her told her it wasn’t even her place to feel betrayed by this. “Is that right?” she resorted to saying.

“You were going to _kill_ all those people.”

And that was it. That was the trigger. That was the forbidden. That should never be said out loud, it was the unspoken rule, the common sense agreement between the two of them. So why was he...

“No,” she shook her head stubbornly, nothing but pure defiant deflection. She refused point blank to let it in. “I changed my mind, remember? I helped you stop it.”

“But you _were_ going to. You wanted to see those people dead. Innocent people, people not like you and me- _children_ -“

“No-“ _Not_ the children, that was excessively-outrageously too far to point that out. 

“You were going to kill them, you were going to kill everyone,“ Adler showed no sign of relenting, and to add insult to injury, this was the most passionate she’d ever seen him about anything. “If we hadn’t stepped in-“

 _This_. This is was what she had been manoeuvring around when she dared to step into her own head, this was what she tried so despairingly hard to bury deep, _deep_ down into the unoccupied spaces of her mind.

But now it was in front of her, right up in her face snarling and baring its rotting teeth at her. It had grown bloated with fury at her neglecting it.

Once upon a time, even if she didn’t remember ever having those intentions, she was going to _kill all those people._ Pretending this truth didn’t exist was only ever going to be a provisional solution that would fall flat on its face when the time came.

“You wouldn’t have stopped the nukes if it wasn’t for me.” The whisper wafted through the air, but she couldn’t even remember opening her mouth to vocalise them.

“You hardly even had a choice but to tell us the truth. But you keep telling yourself that, I know it’s the only way you sleep at night.”

She felt herself deteriorating now, the last of her fight being sucked up, and now she couldn’t stop herself from inhaling the reality into her lungs. “All those people...” she found herself uttering.

“All those people,” he confirmed, voice echoing resoundingly. 

“So you should have killed me then.”

“I should have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same question, everyday since.”

“...so you made the wrong decision.”

“I did. You haven’t changed. You’re still a murderer. You always will be.”

“And you think you’re _that_ much better than me?”

“I’d do the world a favour... I’d kill myself if I wasn’t.”

An involuntary battle cry came from her lips as those words landed, she lunged at him, she swore at him, a jumble of curses that were hardly even coherent. And it didn’t make sense, because she simply didn’t swear. The girlish, immature airiness of the voice yelling and screaming discerned that it was definitely her noise.

She had no recollection of how a knife had found itself into her hand either, but she knew she was aiming right for his face. His face was the only adequate target to satiate the all consuming hatred that engulfed her.

The scared cheek to add new additions- or the clear side to even out the startling apparent lopsidedness of his face.

She didn’t have the privilege of making the decision in the end. His hand gripped her puny wrist, and it snaps under the pressure. The girl ignores that and the knife that clangs down to the ground.

He stares down at her now, pity that was too condescending to have good intentions, simultaneously a mild disgust glazed over his eyes. It was typical, there never was much vehemence in any emotion or feeling he may have felt towards her- it did tend to sting.

“I’m sorry I dragged it out,” he told her, that was sincere. “I should have done this long ago.”

It was his turn to grab at her now. And in a sickening, shameful twist it half reminded her of how he had laid his hands on her on _that_ night.

But then he pushed her and it wiped her mind clean. She stumbled over her own two feet and then she was airborne. All that was left to do was watch as his face grew smaller and smaller as he stood there on the ledge of the cliff, watching her plummet-

And then she shot up, a strangled noise of protest escaping her throat. Her shoulders sagged down immediately when she noticed her surroundings. Sun streaked in through the blinds that warmed the small room through like the inside of an over. The first thing she set eyes on was a generic wall hanging that featured little blue sail boats, for some reason it took centre stage in Roth’s guest bedroom. 

_Roth’s_ guest bedroom, in Berlin. Not _Slovetsky_. Of course not _Slovetsky_.

She got out of the bed, grimacing as the sheets briefly stuck to her from the buckets of sweat that apparently leaked from her last night. The girl quickly made a mental note to stick it in the washer before he got home, but right now - she needed air. Real air.

The young woman padded into the living room, her socks slipping across the floor, her bare legs sticking together annoyingly from the stickiness of her perspiration 

Perching on the ledge, she cracked open the window and leaned out. Roth had a decent view. It wasn’t exactly a pretty sea front or even a glamorous city sky line. But a street below, and the apartment was on a low enough level where she could just make out the features on a persons face. It was an apt spot to people watch, to contemplate that every passerby has a life as graphic and ever multiplexing as her own.   


On second thought, she countered herself, perhaps it wasn’t _too_ self centred and unrealistic to suspect hers was more complicated than most. 

Her gaze fell to a woman, clearly run ragged but still so pretty with her perfectly pouffed hair and sweet tweed coat. She pushed a pram. Toddling along beside her with a jaunty jog was a child a good few years older than the baby, teddy bear in hand, red bobble hat animated on his bouncy head. The mother turned to him, a stern word and finger wag that quickly broke into a smile and adoring, passing caress of his face.

Bell had visions of herself leaping into the street, stopping in front of them with a skid, stressing to them that she was _so, so, sorry_ for what she very nearly played a part in. But they didn’t understand, so the child was just terrified, the baby began to scream, the mother would carefully enquire if she needed help all the while trying to soothe her children because that’s the sort of woman Bell imagined her to be. Just simply good. Deserving of nothing bad...ever. 

It was a self sabotaging activity, the tangent of thoughts and imaginings she had embarked upon. She started to cry.

Small sniffles at first that slowly turned to full, hearty body shaking sobs. And then she remembered, she was alone, Roth had gone to work early this morning. So she howled like her life depended on it, satisfied with the sound of her anguish echoing through the apartment, banging her head hard against the wall for good measure.

When she was done, she dragged herself to one of his sofas and collapsed down, having worn her body out from crying as if she were an infant herself.

-

The girl must have passed out for a number of hours, because when she woke up again it was dark, and Roth was kneeled down besides her, eyes deeply saddened at the sight in front of him.

She must have looked worse than she thought.

“Winter...” he touched her cheek, irritated and stiff from salty tears. “Listen to me, they’re looking for you. The CIA, they must have alerted the BND. They interrogated me, but I told them I hadn’t seen you. But I think they might check here. They know we’re friends. We need to go.”

Bell needed no further clarification as she sat up, running fingers through knotted hair and letting out a short sigh. “No,” she shook her head, “I have to go.”

He stood back up, and she could see now he was paled and anxious. “I’ve already thought about this,” he disregarded. “I have a friend, he can do you fake passports, have you out of the country by-“

She stood up to join him now, a determination steeling her tired tear-stained face. Her hands grabbed his, his boney yet strong alabaster knuckles protruding against her small fingers. “I never should have come here. I can’t drag you into this. Because once you get dragged in, you can’t get out.”

He glanced down at their hands and looked back up at her. The man looked younger now, a pained expression on his face like someone had personally wronged _him_ , as if he were so overwhelmed by unfairness.

She felt guilt flutter at her heart that settled into conscience-stricken regret. This hadn’t been the right thing to do.

“I’ll be dragged in if it means you’re safe.”

She hummed a smile, a soft ghost of a giggle as she let go off his hands. And they stood staring at each other now, the darkness of the apartment illuminated by the open window that allowed light from the street-lamps in. “You are a BND agent, a good one too, I think you should act like it.”

“No one would know,” he reasoned. “I’ll smuggle you away and go back to work the next day and still smile in their faces. Not a problem. I don’t care about them anymore, the BND is a _joke_.”

“It’s still not worth risking everything you have.”

He shook his head, avoiding her gaze now as he stared out the window in deep, isolating thought. His eyes squinted with concentration and she imagined how his mind raced to come up with ideas and solutions.

“I’m not a good person,” was the only thing she could think to say in an attempt to snap him out of it, and it was a cop out. “You don’t want a friend like me. I don’t think you should be going out of your way like this.”

“No,” he agreed passively. “I don’t want a _friend_ like you. I could never be _just friends_ with a woman like you.”

Uncertainty swept over her features, before a slow, sad upturn of her lips settled as it became profoundly clear what he was attempting to insinuate.

The regretful, abashed look he finally set her with cemented it. He hadn’t planned on making the admission anytime soon.

“If you feel that way,” a hand came up to sweep the skin between cheek and jaw, spiky from a few days old clean shave. “If you care about me, if you want to help, please just let me go...”

He opened his mouth but she gave a silencing shake of her head. “Just trust me. No one lets me do what I want these days. No one lets me deal with things myself and make my own choices...Please be the person who does.”

She detested stage managing him in this way, it reminded her too greatly of what had been done to her. And her methodology of persuasion was so gentle yet so effective against him.

But it would be for both of their sakes in the end. He had to fall back, there was no way around it.

“Alright, Winter. Godspeed.”

-

It didn’t take long for Bell to find a pay phone, an out of place eggy yellow box among the slate grey of Berlin’s streets. She pulled the piece of paper with the phone number out of her pocket, the one she had liberated from the man from the cafe.

The phone was irritatingly cold and cumbersome against her cheek, and the sound of it dialling out echoed through her ears, amplifying the head ache that had been creepy up on her.

She closed the door to the phone booth in an attempt to shut out some of night air. And then she realised the phone was ringing out for too long. Adler had always made a point of answering immediately, she had seen it time and time again.

The girl let out a agitated sigh as she ran her finger across the graffiti that marred the inside glass. _No Berlin, no Europe_ was scrawled across in blue marker, and then _No more wars, no more divide_ , she found both endearingly and depressingly redundant.

Below that; an illustration of a communist hammer and sickle, craftily entwined with a Swastika. _Creative_ , she admitted, but it evoked a feeling of unease within her and she had to turn her back on it.

“Yeah, who’s this?” a rough gravelly voice came from the phone suddenly, it startled her and she had to scramble not to drop the phone.

She didn’t know the man intimately, but Woods had an impressionably distinctive voice.

“It’s Bell.”

“Hi _Bell_ , what do you want?”

Surprise lit up her face, he was ignorant to what was going on, right under his nose. Adler and Park were really something when it came to discretion, still, it worked in her favour. If they hadn’t told Woods, perhaps they hadn’t told the upper levels of the CIA their dilemma as of yet.

“Will you tell Adler I’ll meet him at the Wall in a couple of hours?”

“What’s in it for me?”

The extent of the ridiculousness of the question had her taken aback, and then frustrated when she, for the life of her, couldn’t conjure up a way to respond. “Is he there?”

“No... wait where are you actually? Aren’t you meant to be here all the time now? Under lock and key or some shit?”

She didn’t answer, shaking her head at him despite being on the phone and not face to face. “He’s out looking for you isn’t he?”

The girl shut her eyes and rested her forehead against the glass as he started to ramble. “Sneaking away from that conniving bastard, that’s ballsy. Yeah, you know, I thought Park and Adler had their panties in a twist about something, more than usual I mean, I don’t bother to ask these days. They don’t tell me shit anyway.”

“Oh,” she spoke at last, deciding to humour him. “Do they seem really angry?”

“Ahh, they’re always a pair of miserable squares, it’s hard to know when somethings actually wrong. Don’t worry though, I’ll let him know. Maybe I’ll sweeten Park up before she comes over.”

She let out a gentle scoff at this, knowing full well that he’d be more likely to do the opposite. “Actually- ask Adler to come alone.”

“Alone huh?” He chuckled down the phone, she wasn’t sure what for but it was a surprising respite to hear. “Yeah alright, leave it with me.”

“Thank you, Woods.”

“You owe me one.”

She placed the phone down. Two hours. Now she had time for one stop before her _reunion_.

-

The familiarity of her home instantly subdued her nerves. There was an eeriness about her apartment, knowing that it had been empty for weeks- or so she would assume.

But she knew not too long after she arrived, her acute perceptiveness serving her well, something was amiss.

Ornaments had been moved, a cabinet left open slightly. The girl hurried over to her front door and opened it again. It didn’t come as any astonishment, but regardless a queasiness came over her as she took note of the tiny yet distinctive nicks and scratches around the keyhole. _Forced entry_.

“Gosh,” she murmured to herself as she stood up and shut the door again. Bell began to rationalise in that moment, nibbling her lip fiercely as she stood there in thought. Who’s to say it wasn’t your everyday burglary?

Creeping her head round to observe her lounge area again, she huffed and shook her head, a bitter smile of sarcasm coming to her lips. The television was still there, everything was still here.

She almost laughed because-“He was right,” she muttered to herself. _Of course_ he was right. Attempts had been made. _It’s not excessive, it’s necessary,_ she had been assured several times when questioning why she had to be locked away in the decaying, damp mess of house in the middle of nowhere. And she had been a denier, playing along with it all purely to appease them, -him, but still doubting it’s practicality. 

A fierce, energising defiance washed over her as she thought about it. She marched into her kitchen, grabbing one of her chairs and angling it against her front door.

She had come home, to _her_ home, one of the only thing she had in life, to shower and change and pack more clothes, and that’s what she was going to do - Regardless of who or what had decided to come in and out of her apartment at their leisure.

Checking under her kitchen sink, she was satisfied to see her M-82 still remained in its usual spot, it’s only real function up until now being collecting dust. Her memory served her right in believing it was already loaded, so she tucked it into the waist band of her jeans and began towards her bathroom.

It was the sweetest relief to wash her hair and skin in her own bath. The bathroom in the safe house made her squirm, made her paranoid that she was dirtier coming out than she was going in.

She headed into her bedroom now in a towel. Gradually, a comfortableness and ease she hadn’t felt for far too long relaxed her body. Her fingers reached over to her small pink radio, Duran Duran banished the silence efficaciously.

As she opened her wardrobe and looked through her clothes, silks and wools and cottons flowing through her hands, she dared to think that maybe, in the end at least, everything would alright.

She sat on her bed, leaning back to pull her jet black stockings over her limbs, but something stopped her mid movement.

A red red envelope laid between her pink silk pillows. This, she couldn’t find any humour in. She could let this roll off her back with an _Oh well, what can you do type_ mantra. The fun was over and anxiety replaced it in one smooth motion. Pulling her tights over her buttocks, she snatched the envelope up and ripped it open, having little patience for it.

With a furrowed brow, she examined what had laid inside. A greeting card, with an elegant illustration of a deer on it. A doe to be specific.

She opened it and something slipped out, but she read the words written first. In Russian- she suspected no less- was “ _I’ll wait for forever, if that is what it takes, happy birthday dearest._ ” and this time, an address, a Russian one. The woman came over faint as she felt what had fallen onto her lap.

Something glossy, shiny and smooth to the touch. Her hands trembled as she held what she now knew now to be a photo, her thumb rubbed over the surface. “Oh...”

The picture, in black and white, was of a cherubic looking young girl and an evidently aged, distinctively handsome man. Bell tried to place the age of the younger first, deciding she couldn’t have been older than 14, but that wasn’t before she established the harrowing fact, the fact that seemed to slow down time and knock all the wind out of her body, the girl was _her_.

 _Her_ , but with chubbier cheeks, rounded eyes looking up through big lashes had a visibly mischievous glint. It went hand in hand with a bright toothy smile, an unabashed beam. Same long curly hair, but in a high ponytail that she imagined swayed on her head at every slight movement,secured by a ribbon that she felt in her gut would be a vibrant _communist_ red.

But there was dissonance in this photo, a large rifle was held confidently in the girls little hands. There would never be a way for that gun to look apposite in this small, joyful girl’s grip.

And then there was the man next to her, and she recognised him only from other photos alone. There was nothing in her minds eye to go off. _Perseus_ had his arm round her, sporting a small, earnest smile himself on his sturdily structured face .

This much younger, cheekier version of herself, was posing for a picture with _Perseus_ , he embraced her as if she were his own. And she looked so _happy_.


	13. The Berlin Wall

“You look pretty.”

Not the words she had been anticipating - and she wasn’t expecting him to be so eerily calm either. Perhaps the way he smoked leisurely was a facade, a tool he was utilising to ease the perceived seriousness of the situation. She watched as the amber cherry of the cigarette steadily lit up and dimmed down again. Smoke drifted and billowed over her face. For whatever reason, just this once, it made her buzz with irritation.

“Get that cigarette smoke out of my face,” she dead panned, and to her hidden surprise he just nods, takes one last deliberate inhale and tosses it away.

She instinctually goes to thank him then, but manages to bite her tongue.

“Interesting choice,” Adler gestures towards what was in front of them with a nod of his head.

The girl let’s her eyes drift to what he was referring to. It was a sight she had seen a handful of times before having lived in Germany for a lengthy period. The Berlin wall, a grey slab vastly stretching across miles upon miles of territory, overrun with layers of graffiti every colour imaginable to the human eye. It was messy, blurred together in murky disarray, but if she focused hard enough there were distinguishable markings.

Everything from explicitly scornful political depictions to otherwise meaningless vulgarity had been deposited by Germans onto the concrete barrier, a testament to the bleak rage thickly polluting the city. 

“It just reminds me that the worlds in the middle of a war, puts things into perspective...” she tells him after a while.

“Perspective?”

“Stops me from thinking about myself for five minutes.”

“Ah.”

The two stood in silence and as the seconds rolled past she realised he was waiting for her to say her piece. The girl had half expected that he’d apprehend her onsite, visions of her being frog matched to a car had been playing out in her mind.

But there had been good reason to ask him to meet in public, Adler wouldn’t draw attention to them like that, of that she was almost certain.

He caved and broke the silence when it became apparent she wasn’t planning to initiate any meaningful conversation. “I hope you calling me here means you’re done making me chase you around the whole of Berlin.”

The woman wasn’t amused by the half joking statement and in turn decided not to dignify it directly. “You didn’t have to snitch on me to the BND.”

“I didn’t want to go to the BND. You’ve made us look fucking _stupid_.”

 _Us_... Bell contemplated this, and concluded he must mean the CIA. _Letting the side down_ , she mused bitterly.

“Just tell me what’s happened, Bell.” He sighed, cold breath materialising in the air, almost as a replacement to the usual cigarette smoke.

She was tongue tied, and it was heatedly frustrating. The girl had rehearsed this encounter in her head at least seven- _eight_ times. And she had envisioned his gobsmacked face when she confronted him- but in hindsight it was probably wishful thinking for that rather out of character reaction. Still, she had conjured up several versions of what she might say to him in this moment, precisely how she’d word it. Snappy, to the point, or perhaps something of a monologue, expressing every damning emotion she had and pointing out every deep, dark flaw in him.

But now, stood next to the man- nothing. Too embarrassed to mention the most important issue, mind too statically blank to completely dissect why the issue was so unjust in the first place. As if mental constipation.

Bell had been stuck in silence for too long and she sensed she’d missed her chance, Adler cemented with an impatient clearing of his throat. “Fine, if you’re not going to talk like an adult, just go and get in the car, I’ve had enough of this shit.”

This sparked something in her, shook her awake, raw agitation laced her small voice. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You haven’t got a choice,” he fired back immediately, his voice back to the unforgiving professionalism a superior would usually have over a subordinate.

“And you did a very good job of making me forget that, didn’t you?” She tilted her head up at him, tired cynicism dulling her eyes where she was sure fiery, impassioned rage should have been instead.

He let out a deep, steady sigh through his nose and paused to consider her words before replying. “I get it. You regret sleeping with me.”

“Regret?“ Bell’s narrowed her eyes at the man, utter appalled by his conclusion. “You _lied._ I thought you cared about me, I thought you felt how I felt-“

“I _do_ ,“ he spat out instantly and then reeled himself back just as quickly, turning away from her momentarily. 

“That’s not what I heard,” she whispered.

Bell watched the way the muscles of his neck rippled against his skin gently, one of the very few indication that he was considerably more infuriated by this exchange than he was communicating.

“That’s what happens when you sneak around, and listen in on private conversations.” He said lowly, voice growing rougher round the edges with every word spoken. “You hear stuff you don’t understand.”

“No, I hear the truth,” she countered, matching his dangerous quietness.

It was Adler’s turn to be rendered lost for works now, a slow, seething shake of his head was all he had to offer.

“I’m not going to run from you,” she told him, voice resonate with determination. “I want you to agree to leave me alone.”

The girl had managed to spark rare incredibility in the man with this admission.

“It’s not about me _leaving you alone_ ,“ he began. “This is about so much more than your feelings, Bell. You’re wanted by one of the most dangerous terrorist organisations in the world, and you come here with ‘ _leave me alone_ ’? Like I’m one of your little boyfriends?” Adler’s was utterly exasperated by her, his archetypal undisturbed demeanour had vanished. “Go and get in the car.”

“I’m not getting in the car.”

“Get in the car or I’ll _put_ you in the car.”

“I’ll scream if you touch me. Someone will call the police.”

He scoffed cruelly at this. “The police,” he nodded sarcastically. “Right.”

Bell shut her eyes, feeling the sudden urge to tune everything out and retreat into the pitch black behind her eyelids. She could feel any hope for control of the situation rapidly slipping from her grasp. And his patience was depleting by the second. He really would _put_ her in the car.

“I don’t want to live under the same roof as you,” she tried eventually.

“And that’s it? You’re not running off to find Perseus, you just want to be away from me?”

Of course he would trivialise this, but it had had the desired effect of extinguishing his anger so she decided to let it pass.

She let her silence do the talking once more, turning her attention to a group of youths in the distance, their laughs and joyful hollering punctuating the quiet night and giving them much needed background noise. “Tell me what you want me to do, kid? And be reasonable.”

“You could always turn around, let me go. Say you can’t find me.”

“And then there would be an entire CIA operation just to look for you, and _when_ you’re found you’ll be in prison for the rest of you life. I really want you to understand that.”

The girl managed to let a tiny, knowing smile find its way onto her face amidst the embittered tension between them. “I’m sure you’d pull some strings to get me out of it.”

“That’s the saddest thing about all this, I probably would.”

The conversation dropped then, Bell burned holes into the ground, Adler burned holes into the top of her skull. Almost as if staring at her could help him come to a quicker resolution on what to do with her.

“Alright kid,” he cut through the silence finally, keeping his tone firm yet light. “I’ll get out of your hair. Park can stay with you instead. I’ll smooth things over with the BND, you can go back to working with them everyday, and I’ll come over to do my work at the safe house when you’re not there. How does that sound?”

“I hate staying there,” she mumbled.

“You can’t go home yet. We don’t know if it’s safe.”

The girl pressed her lips together, the knowledge that her apartment was irrefutably _unsafe_ flickered across her mind. In that split second she had half a mind to tell him, maybe it was only fair to tell him. All his concerns were justified.

No- he didn’t deserve to know how right he was. And she didn’t want to hear a ‘I told you so’, she feared she might gouge his eyes out if she did.

“Please, Bell. I really don’t want to do anything drastic with.”

_For goodness sake._

“Alright, Adler,” she relented finally, self loathing rushing to pool in her chest as she did.

He let out an exhale of relief and went to place his hand on her shoulder. His touch blazed against her, even with the layers of his glove and her thick jacket between their skin. The girl aggressively shrugged her shoulder to brush him away and turned to fix him with a steely glare. “Stick to your word though. I don’t want to see you around. I mean it.”

His hand hovered in mid air, stuck in place from where she had rejected it. “I’ll do the best I can.”

The two started towards his car, him a deliberate few paces behind her.

“The moment it’s possible, I promise you, you can have your old life back.”

Knowing the man couldn’t see her face, she grimaced wholly at the ignorant irony of his comment, _old life_. Her actual old life was irrecoverable, and he knew that better than anyone. 

-

Park couldn’t even spare Bell her usual congenial smile when she came through the door, small suitcase in tow. A look of bored dissatisfaction marred the British woman’s captivating face.

“This is a terrible inconvenience for me, I’d just like to make that clear,” Bell wasn’t sure who Park was addressing as she stood there in the room of the safe house. It was most likely her _and_ Adler, who stood next to her now, leather jacket and dark shades firmly on, leather holdall over his shoulder. “And this place is a shit-hole.”

Bell held strong against Park’s incivility, awkwardness and discomfort making her wish to shrink into nothing. Instead she angled her chin up against the indignity of the act - literally being handed over like a baton. Her fellow agents didn’t even feel it necessary to conceal the fact she was a burden anymore.

“Sorry Park, I really need a break from this place, fair is fair.”

She scoffed and muttered under her breath. “Chivalry really is dead.”

Adler paid no heed to the British woman’s soured mood. He turned to Bell instead, she caught him out the corner of her eye but didn’t bother to turn to acknowledge him in return. “Bye, Bell.”

“Bye Adler.”

He left, and as soon as he was absent from the room her heart sunk into her stomach. A thick and suffocating silence settled onto the two women until the MI6 agent moved first. “Right then... I’ll go and unpack.”

With Park distracted, she was left to her own devices. She fished around in her coat pocket and pulled out the photo, the one that had knocked the wind out of her upon first seeing it. Now it left a dull ache in her stomach every time she tortured herself with looking at it. _Her and Perseus_.

She walked over to the kitchen area, switching on the harsh bright lights and sitting at the table. Her hand snaked out to pluck a photo of Perseus from the evidence files.

Biting her lip to will herself to focus, she held the evidence photo up against the one she already had in her possession. _Around ten years apart they were taken, must be around that._ She could only estimate, but she resigned it was a decent enough start.

Park came back down an hour later, Bell was soaking up unclaimed time by reading _the colour purple._

They ignored each other, and Bell didn’t particularly mind, as long as she kept hidden behind her book the silence between them needn’t be unpleasant.

After ten minutes or so of sounds of clamouring around in the kitchen, comforting savoury scents wafted over and up through her nostrils. “Have you eaten?” Park called back to her.

She was not in the habit of yelling over to people, so she got up then, folding the page of her novel and deciding she’d get back to Alice Walker’s storytelling later.

Bell’s eyes immediately landed on Park’s dinner for the evening. Indulgently heavy Buttered toast and baked beans oozing on top.

  
Bell glanced at the now perfectly contented woman, shoving things into the kitchen sink and licking some rogue tomato sauce off her thumb.

“I’m glad I didn’t inherit your eating habits as well.” She intended it to be a playful jab, an attempt at breaking the ice, but in her mind it just came across cold and she felt embarrassed as the words landed. Park paid no mind to her however, a simple amused hum escaping her lips.

Just as Bell began to turn back to her reading spot, her stomach rumbled, loud enough to confidently fill the soundlessness in the kitchen. Park raised her eyebrows pointedly. “I doubt you’ve been taking care of yourself while out on the run.”

Upon being backstabbed by her own body, she allowed Park to dish her out a plate. Putting food in her mouth was the last thing she wanted in this moment, but she thanked Park graciously regardless.

And It wasn’t the food. It was the ever persistent sickness in her chest and stomach, ranging from sharp flutters of anxiousness to dull, deep lingering aches. She had held this feeling inside of her before, albeit softer-weaker varieties. Two breakups and one almost boyfriend, (she was still bitter over that one) paled in comparison to this.

But she knew it was heartbreak. She had lived enough life to know that at least.

Park dug in without ceremony, somehow managing to make beans on toast look like a gourmet meal with the neat way she handled her cutlery. Bell imagined this was beneath what the MI6 woman was use to, but she was undoubtedly sacrificing creature comforts to be here.

“Beans on toast is an English delicacy, I’ll have you know.”

“I’m not English...” she replied plainly.

“No, but you do sound like you are sometimes,” she gave Bell a haughty smile. “And you can thank me for that. Because you could have picked up on... _Adler’s_ way of speaking, if I hadn’t stepped in.”

Bell let out a tiny breath of a laugh through her nose as she started to stir her baked beans around on her plate. “Would that really be so terrible?”

“American English is a great tragedy,” she placed her knife and fork down now, clasping her hands together onto her crossed over knee and sitting back in her chair.

“I see.”

The lighthearted moment between the two faded away slowly, their small agreeable smiles slowly drooping back down to bleak, straight faces. Park levelled her with a curious stare, restrained words manifested across her face until she spoke again.“Tensions seem high between you and Adler.”

Bell shrugged slightly, irked that Park was taking it _there_. “Because I went AWOL. Obviously.”

The British woman wasn’t satisfied with the icy retort. “There was something strange about him when we were looking for you.”

“Strange? Really?” She feigned bored disinterest, but begrudgingly, she was all ears at this statement.

“I’ve worked with him for a long time now, I’ve seen sides of him many people don’t get to see,” she lamented. “And I’ve never seen him like that before.”

Bell tilted her towards her, egging her on to elaborate.

“He just seemed so _worried_. And then there’s the fact that... he didn’t want to go to Hudson. He didn’t want to tell anyone apart from me, really. And I have to wonder, why is he covering for you?”

The line of questioning proved far too intense for Bell to be comfortable with, she stood from her seat and concerned herself with collecting her and Park’s plates from the table. “He’s responsible for me isn’t he?” she reasoned, turning her back to wash the plates over the kitchen sink. “I’d say he’s looking out for himself.”

“Well, it felt we were going around looking for his lost dog.”

The sentence stung her ears before her mind had time to process it entirely, her head cranked to the side involuntarily in an aggravated tick. Bell dropped the plates back into the sink, disregarding their fragility, and turned to face the woman, leaning back onto the kitchen counter to fix her with a warning glare. “I don’t think that’s very funny, Park.”

“I didn’t make a joke.” They stared each other down for a terse moment. Bell broke first, hiding her lesser nerve with an exaggerative roll of her eyes, once more turning her attention to rinsing the plates for the fourth time. “Adler only cares about the job. He wasn’t that worried about me personally. I can assure you.”

Park hummed something of agreement, and then was done with the conversation, judging by the way her chair scrapped across the floor. “As long as you remember that, Bell.”

Park was retreating, but something had been inflamed in the girl now and she decided she wasn’t done- not yet. “I never stood a chance against you and him.”

It was enough to stop Park in her tracks, she could feel her eyes on her now.

“I can remember, when you use to go off together, and have your little private meetings, and I know now what they were about but...” a soft melancholy washed over her face as she reminisced. “I use to drive myself insane because- I was so stupid, I thought it was because you two were... together.”

A tentative hint of smile fell onto Park’s lips, she crossed her arms over herself and wandered back over to the girl slowly. “We knew that. Perhaps it was that innocence and naivety that saved you in the end. I think he took pity on you. Not matter how much he tries to hide the fact.”

“Only he took pity on me, not you?

Park sensed the turn the conversation was starting to take, Bell saw it in her eyes that she wasn’t about to allow herself to be under any sort of blame. “Not killing you was his decision to make. That’s just the way it was set up. Me and Hudson could only advise him on what to do, but he called all the final shots when it came to you.”

“And you really think he didn’t kill me because of...pity? Maybe he just wanted to keep me to help catch Perseus.“

Park shook her head at this, no thought required when she answered. “You’re special, Bell, but that doesn’t mean you’re irreplaceable,” she stated quietly, staring into space now seemingly in deep thought, the silence of all her unspoken words lingered in the air between them.

She composed herself with a sigh. “Adler wanted me to tell you, the BND want you bright and early in the morning. He says I’m to drive you there.”

The younger woman nods simply. “Alright.”

-

As forecasted, Bell was sat in her superior’s office first thing the next morning. It felt surreal to be back, a couple days ago she was certain she’d never see the inside of the place again. With eyes heavy and lidded from sleep, she attempted to centre her attention on her handler, Mr Arnold. The vehement man seemed mildly befuddled as he looked over papers on his desk.

“Mr Adler tells me you were...mugged?”

 _I’m sure he did_. “Yes, that’s right.”

“How awful,” the man struggled to match his tone to his words. “Is everything alright now?”

“Yes sir.”

“And you’re fit to carry on with all your usual duties?

“Yes sir.”

He nodded slowly, jotting something down on a piece of paper on his desk, seemingly approving of her short, curt responses.

“I’m sure you’ve already been informed, but we require your services more as of late, we’ve had to insist you make your work at the BND a priority.”

Bell nodded wordlessly, staring at the space behind him. She wondered now, how much correspondence back and forth went on between her higher ups, on both sides. Hudson, Adler, this man she hardly even saw or spoke to, constantly arranging things on her behalf. She seldom got a say or look in the matter. Just _told_ , and expected to obey without question the second she is told. 

“These are tough times for Germany, I trust you understand.”

“I do sir.”

Bell managed to catch one of the receptionist in passing as she left the man’s office. She called out the woman’s name urgently as she rushed down the hall, making her jump and scramble with papers she’d been carrying.

“Oh, hello ma’am,” the middle age woman smiled tightly, clearly not use to being interrupted on her usual day to day.

“Hello,” Bell greeted back. “Have you seen Agent Roth?”

“I believe he’s away on business at the moment, sorry.”

She found herself disheartened at the news. But in actuality she knew it was for the better that she didn’t have to face him again so soon after their last tense encounter.

And when she did see him she’d have some explaining to do; why was she back here already when she had been so adamant she needed to run away? She had been wondering that question herself. “Not to worry, thank you.”

Once safe in the privacy of her office, Bell pulled the photo of her and Perseus from her jacket pocket. The knowledge that it was on her person- at the BND-had been playing havoc on her mind.

She started to write then. Bringing her pen to a crisp sheet of paper, her heart thumped in her chest as the weight of what she was doing occurred to her. 

_Dear Perseus_ \- No _To Perseus_

That was as far as she got, her hand hovered over the page for a few minutes longer before she capped her pen, placed the paper into her shredder and buried her head in her hands. _Who I am I kidding?_

-

Park waited for her at the end of the day, parked up at the back of the building.

She got in the car and Park turned to her with a dazzling beam on her face, a type of smile Bell couldn’t recall ever seeing from her. “She’s lovely.”

Bell furrowed her brow in confusion at the woman before hearing the perspicuous sound of a mewl from the backseat - a cat _._

“Oh!”

 _Her cat._ Having to hand the feline over to an old friend, or acquaintance would be a better term these days, had been a dismaying task. But she had been given no choice, Adler had firmly told her no pets allowed at CIA safe houses. She hadn’t made a fuss about it at the time, but it had always seemed like a needless sort of micromanagement to her.

“I don’t understand...” Bell turned back to Park inquisitively. “How come you have her?”

“Adler asked me to collect her. He said something about it helping with all the mice,” even she herself seemed bemused at this. “Saves on mouse traps I suppose.”

Bell leaned over to take the animal in her arms, not minding the white fluff that inevitable shed and transferred onto her clothing. She lifted it into her lap, hands firm against the animals wriggles of protests.

She smiled wryly as she used her tapered nails to scratch behind her pet’s silken ears, earning satisfying loud purrs. _To help with the mice?_ The lies Adler concocted were getting more ridiculous by the day, she was certain they’d only seen one since they’d both been there.

Her gratitude towards the gesture was begrudging, but strong. And reminded herself then; forgiving him again would be absolute surrender.

She’d have to remember not to forgive. 


	14. Struck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi 🥰  
> Okay story time, I wrote out two chapters, they were edited, polished as best I could, they were completely ready to post, and then guess what happens?! The file corrupts 🤗🤗🤗, I try to recover them tirelessly, it doesn’t work, so I have to write them again! And here they are! I probably wrote too much to compensate, and they’re chaotic, but I hope you enjoy them even a little bit regardless 🌸🌸 Because I’ll be honest I was ready to give up, or at least take an extended hiatus, but I just couldn’t stay away 🥺😌 Thank you for the kudos and kind words in general and in my brief absence, it really  
> motivated me! 
> 
> \- 🔅ALSO🔅 Please be aware, this chapter has some deep stuff. I’ve come to understand that people in this fandom use Adler as a comfort device of sorts and sometimes find situations he’s written in as uncomfortable or possibly even triggering, while I can’t relate to that, Id hate for anyone to be hurt by this. It’s nothing too crazy, extreme or disturbing in here, but just a heads up just in case🌸 And the chapter following this one is lighter and fluffier, so please don’t think it’s all darkness🥺 K bye!

A red circle marked the 24th day of February on the calendar of the safehouse wall, Bell turned to face her follow agents. “Did something happen today?”

Sims and Parks regarded her passively, barely turning their attention away from their current tasks. They were figuratively and literally buried under work, if the chaotic explosion of papers, coffee mugs and wrappers of makeshift meals sprawled across the table were anything to go by. Unorganisation, Bell knew, was inevitable when you had been working for a nine hour stretch in one contained space.

Being so worn through, neither one of them were enthused to answer her. It was Sims who indulged her in the end after she stood and stared at them for long enough. “Mission tonight,” he confirmed. “The one set up from that intel acquired from that Seidel woman. They’ll be here, soon actually.”

“Who?”

Park looked up at her then, a captious frown pinching her rosy lips. “Mason, Woods and Adler. You have been told about this, Bell.”

Recollection soon clicked into place and brought instant dread along with it.

“Completely slipped my mind,” the girl murmured to herself, a shaky breath coming from her mouth as she did.

The British woman had already diverted her scrutiny, Sims on the other hand wasn’t one to let Bell’s bout of apparent nerves fly under the radar. Soulful eyes peered up at her from under the brim of his cap. “Is it all too much for you?”

His face held innocent inquisitiveness, and she remembered then: the man was oblivious to the strife that had kicked off between her and Adler. Ground-breaking catastrophes could happen right under his nose, if Park and Adler decided he should be ignorant to them then so he would be.

“No,” the girl offered him a disarming look. “I was just enjoying the peace and quiet.”

He scoffed, nodding in knowing solidarity. “I hear you. Woods never knows when to shut the fuck up unless he’s on a mission.”

A faded smile washed over Bell’s face, wistful that the triviality of Woods being abominably mouthy wasn’t the most of her problems.

“Here’s a copy of the mission briefing,” the man held out a file to her, “I know you’re not going on this one, but just in case you wanted to stay in the loop.”

Bell stalled in her failure to find any true intrigue towards it, regardless she took it from the man with an appreciative nod. “I’ll give it a look.”

As she began to walk away an unmistakable melodic mewl stopped her in her tracks. She turned to see her cat sitting at the kitchen door, blue china eyes staring up at her expectantly.

“Come on then Percy,” she breathed softly, making her way towards the door to let the creature out, stepping outside herself.

Feeling the chilled air waft up her nostrils, she peered up to see starlight glowing dimly through the murky night clouds. And then she remembered, the last time she had been out here at night the sky had been clear, the stars had sparkled so brilliantly she felt capable of standing and staring at them for hours, but then of course, he had been out here too.

 _It_ had started in this precise spot, parallel to red brick walls and rooted in the concrete flooring, overlooking the never-ending fields that surrounded the property. That night was burned into her mind just as permanently as the night that proceeded it.

Halting her mind mid lap, she allowed brief amusement to distract her as she watched her cat start to roam the outside area, treading through the wild grass with exaggerated raises of his paws.

She opened the file in her hand, interest vague with an intention to skim through it to gain only the gist of it:

Adler and Co. were to apprehend a man recruiting spies across Berlin, extremely likely on behalf of Perseus. East _and_ West at that. He had privileges that allowed him to fluidly move between both realms. Rare, _valuable_. Bell imagined capture was high up on Adler’s to do list.

Of course, there would be the everyday run of the mill inconveniences that came with missions of this nature- like this alleged Perseus agent being guarded by nothing short of a small militia.

She shut the file with a snap, shoving down the tinge of worry that made itself known in her torso as she did. It was a pesky unease- one that tended to gnaw away at her from inside, one that ultimately meant she was fretting about him, _still._

As prophesied, the three men arrived just an hour later. They bulldozed in. Their strong presence having a way of transforming the solemn atmosphere into one more precarious.

Woods was already in the kitchen talking to Sims, but Mason seemed to linger back. Shy, uncertain where to place himself, or both, he hovered for a little while before taking a seat a manageable distance away.

Bell made eye contact with him for a split second, they shared mutual awkwardness stemming from nothing consequential, it still made them avert their gaze from each other promptly. 

Mason would be the one to alleviate the unease as he leaned forward wringing his hand. “How you are holding up, Bell?”

“I’m well, thank you...” she replied, hesitating before moving forward with forcibly polite small talk. “How about you?”

“Living the dream.”

She hummed a cordial smile to the man but decided that was the extent of their niceties and excused herself. Her mind was set on stowing herself away, like waiting out a hurricane or tornado to pass from a safe haven.

It was sensible, a no brainer; hide until the men left again- no, until Adler left again. That way she could scrape by with no encounter to torture herself with, replaying and rewinding it in her head at bedtime until driven to near instantly.

She made her way towards the stairs, scooping her cat up from the floor and grabbing her book from the table. 

But then she halted as she came to the door of one of the rooms, cracked open allowing a streak of light to pour into the hallway.

It had to be him in there.

A rogue spark of defiance had her gingerly setting her cat back down on the floor, placing her book to side, and then stepping into the room, closing the door behind her.

She finds him, soft, amber glow of the nearby lamp illuminating his silhouette. He was leaned over a table, scrutinizing a map. Nimble, hard at work fingers traced roads and would-be paths. He didn’t turn around to identify who stood behind him, he had never needed to. A habit born from extensive experience that either translated across as unnervingly arrogant or imposingly dexterous. There had been times Bell had revered his personal brand of self-assuredness, now it sowed seeds of irritation deep into the pits of her being.

It was all the fuel she needed.

“This isn’t _getting out of my hair._ ” She leaned back against the wall, standoffish in the way she hugged her arms over her chest.

“Sorry Bell,” he broke the silence finally, his back firmly to her was like the wall between them, making him come across inaccessible. The man took a sharpie from his jet-black bomber jacket to start marking the map. “Much more important things going on.”

His outright dismissal rendered her indignant. Despite the current predisposition of their relationship, the context of the recent harrowing events, she couldn’t stop the prickle of rejection that tingled in her chest and climbed its way up her neck to burn her cheeks with hot pink.

“We had an agreement,” she persisted, determined now that the encounter stopped being so desperately-on her part, one sided. “You said I wouldn’t have to see you.”

“If you really want,” he leaned up slightly, turning his head so she could see the budding agitation start to tighten his jaw. “I’ll deal with any tantrums you have as soon as I’m done with the mission. Right now, I haven’t got time for you.”

 _You._ He could have said _I haven’t got time for this, I haven’t got time for it,_ but he said, _I haven’t got time for you._ And it stung. She knew it shouldn’t have, not to this extent at least, but it did.

Pure venom started to flow, a debate in her mind kicked off to determine whether the grisly, bitter tasting words she had just conjured in her head should ever leave the plains of her mouth. Seconds later it was decided. “Well, I hope you don’t make it back.”

And like such words had intended, it snapped him upright to attention. A hand came up to whip his shades off, tossing them onto the table besides him with an unaccustomed disregard for their wellbeing. He marched up to her, leaned down to rid the height dissimilarities between them and plucked her chin in one hand as if it were a mere object.

Alarms bells sounded off violently in Bell’s head, but she stood firm, unwavering. She kept silent as she watched the display, like a bystander simply witnessing it, rather than the one under the brunt of the fury she herself had inspired. Murky storms clouded in his eyes as he scowled at her. She was certain, even the contempt he had shown towards her during interrogations were softer variations than this.

“Let me make one thing clear, if something did happen to me now, you’d be thrown to the wolves.”

The icy coarseness that weaved itself into his voice made a single shiver travel down the column of her spine. She began to manoeuvre her head to loosen his hold on her. It only served to tighten it, head kept infuriatingly stiff. His index finger and thumb dwarfed her face and pressed through her bouncy, youthful flesh to flatted against her jawbone. “So, I’d be careful who you wished death on,” he finished. “If I were you.”

In turn, a surge of temerity struck her, anger at his _anger-_ why should he be the one to be so overpoweringly incensed at _her?_

Hell bent on returning every iota of ill temperament he fired at her, she jutted her chin up and mirrored him with a filthy look of her own. “You said to me, once Perseus is dead, I’ll have a chance at a normal life, but I think...only once _both_ of you are dead-“

“Who else do you think would put up with your shit, Bell?” his provoking question by any logic could have been rhetorical, but ultimately left no room for answers, and she had none anyway. “Do you think anyone else at the CIA would?”

The girl’s failure to retort encouraged him to press on, castigation approaching boiling point. “What I’ve done for you is _highly_ irregular, no one else is going to do what I do for you.”

“And what would that be?” she breathed out, pushing her face up closer to his. “Manipulate, lie-”

“ _Protect,”_ he gave her head a slight shake to punctuate the word, “At every single turn. I don’t expect you to appreciate it, that would be asking too much. But at least fucking _know_ , I’m the only thing standing between you and something far worse than what you’re going through now.”

Finally, he released her from his hold. Her hand flew up to give her jaw a once over. She realised gradually, he hadn’t been gripping her nearly as hard as she had been imagining, but he sold a solid illusion.

Bell could have left it there, left it all in the room and then scurried out of said room herself. Or even tell him how sorry she was in an extra dainty, girlish, _pathetic_ voice she knew had the capability of wiping all of _this-_ whatever _this_ was – away.

But she wasn’t done. It had been her who picked the fight; she had poked and prodded and she wasn’t satisfied with accepting it as a firm backfire, she would see it through to the bitter end.

“That’s what you want,” she pushed herself off the wall and closed the space towards them once more. “You want me in your debt, so you can keep me trapped forever.”

A chuckle escaped him then as he stared down at her, throaty and dark, yet so delicately flowing it was reminiscent of the the cigarette smoke that seeped out of his lips far too often. “You know you shouldn’t flatter yourself so much,” he revealed the point of his mockery. “Forever, Bell? I’d be rid of you _tomorrow_.”

Unshakeable now, she brushed it off before the measure of his mean-spiritedness could hit her. “You could be rid of me _anytime,_ but you love control too much because you’re sick-”

“You’re right, Bell, I could. Maybe I _will_ get some other idiot from Langley down here,” he cut her off, disregarding her insults like mere bugs on a windshield. “And maybe if you fuck him too, he’ll jump through hoops for you as well-”

She struck him, hard, across the face, before he could finish. The sound sliced through the air like the crack of a whip, sickeningly sharp. 

If it weren’t for the burning tightness that spread across her palm, she wouldn’t have believed it had happened. His cheek-the distorted one she had targeted, began to flush. And he just stared.

Unadulterated confusion, eyes searching her face for something she wasn’t sure she had, an answer, an explanation, anything. She just looked back, straight faced, only testament to her trepidation the quickened rise and fall of her chest. She’d be better suited to fleeing, hiding like she had originally intended- but she knew the least he deserved now was her courage.

Bell was thankful when Adler’s face resolved back to a glare, straight, uncut anger was less complex, certainly less heart-wrenching. She waited, anticipating what retaliation he might have in store for her, but he made his way past her, not forgetting to grab his shades on the way.

“Fucking brat.” That was what he left her with as he slammed out the room. That was _all_ he left her with. She didn’t dare move; terror cemented her body in place. Even when she heard the three men leave the house, it took her a few moments to move stiffened limbs. 

Eventually she settled on sitting with Park on the sofa, who she found in a rare moment of doing nothing at all, staring at the walls as if she could see spiralling constellations in the peeling paint and mildew.

“Are you alright?” vague concern shaped Park’s face as the girl sat near her.

She barely knew how to answer, but she was defeated enough to not have the drive to play cover up. “I’ve just made Adler really angry.”

Park hummed at this, ever the hint of playfulness in her tone. “You seem to be in the habit of doing that.”

Bell had no response, not rising to match the woman’s light-hearted demeanour.

“Look at it is this way, Bell,” Park stood now, disappearing over towards the kitchen area momentarily before reappearing again with a bottle of Sauvignon blanc and two glasses from the kitchen. She watched Park with passive miserably as she began to pour the liquid. “He can’t do anything worse to you than he already has.”


	15. Wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *pssst, just in case you skipped straight to latest chapter, make sure you don’t miss chapter 14, I uploaded 2 chapters at once❤️

A loud thud on the door woke Bell up from her slumber. She found herself tucked up on the sofa in a cocoon of blankets, her cat, like her, in deep sleep curled up tightly on her lap. The banging came again, this time she jumped up and stumbled towards the door. “Who is it?”

“Who do you think?” Woods voice called bluntly from the other side.

She opened the door and stepped aside to let the three men pour in. The smell hit her hard, sweat, gun powder, metallic from both blood and metal. Faces showed nothing but immense physical taxation and mental drainage. War torn and spent, for now, until they were forced to do it all over again.

They paid her no mind as they dragged themselves into the house. Woods collapsed onto the sofa, she noted his dirty jeans clad legs and behind on top of the blankets she had been sleeping in, he proceeded to shoo her cat away and throw his boots up onto the table. She pushed back annoyance, deciding that after what they had been through-Hell and back by the looks of it, she should let appalling manners roll off her back. Mason nodded in greeting as he passed her to take a seat too, hanging his head low and rubbing circles into his temples as he did.

She hadn’t noticed right away in her efforts to avoid his eyes, but Adler had made himself scarce. Certainly not for the sake of her, if anybody would be walking on eggshells it wouldn’t be him. No doubt it would be vice versa. And it would be more similar to walking through a mine field.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked decorously, confident the men would not actually required anything from her.

“We’re all good, dollface,” Woods threw over his shoulder.

The girl hovered for a moment, half a mind to ask them how it went, but she could _see_ how it went. They were back here all in relatively one piece, there was nothing more important than that. She had seen them in worse states. 

“Actually Bell,” she glanced over to Mason who spoke up just as she was getting ready to leave them. “Adler got hurt pretty bad, think he’s gone to patch himself up in the back room, maybe you could give him a hand?”

An innocent request, well intended, but she inwardly recoiled at it despite this. She had nothing to offer but a blinking blank stare, Mason grew perplexed at her drawn out hesitation, as if she were stuttering without even opening her mouth. Eventually, she nodded at him, a small smile of reassurance. “Alright, I’ll see if he needs help.”

Adler had found refuge in the room all hell had broken loose in earlier. She wished he hadn’t, deathly tension still lurked in that room, she was sure of it. Stepping in anyway, she didn’t announce her presence exactly as she has neglected to do before.

The man was in the middle of unloading the cargo strapped to his body; he always charged into battle like a pack mule, exceptional physical prowess competent in bearing the weight of supplies and a plethora of weapons. Knifes, sacks, straps, holsters... all hit the floor in a combat themed heap. “You been waiting up for me?” his tone, she hoped she wasn’t imagining it, may have had a hint of cheekiness in it, a lightness. 

She watched with an introverted meekness that she usually reserved for acquaintances. He took off his jacket, his shades, and then a zip up sweatshirt, and that’s when she noticed it, stark against his light grey thermal. Rich, deep red pooled vastly on the fabric near his right shoulder blade, upon closer inspection she saw it was slick, sticky and clinging to his skin. “What is _that?_ ”

“Some amateur asshole... jumped out of nowhere,” he drawled, not being able to restrain a miniscule wince as he pulled a nearby first aid kit onto a table. Under lamplight he produced swabs, gauze and a tall bottle of clear liquid. “Got me in the back with a knife.”

His hands came to grip the hem of his undershirt, pulling it over his head and tossing it across the room. Bell panicked quietly, suddenly faced with the dilemma of where to place her eyes, should she avert them- hadn't she seen it before? He didn’t care, it didn’t matter, especially with the now visible gaping laceration across his back. It ran diagonally the length of his shoulder blade, glowing an alarming red against his pale skin. She wasn’t especially squeamish to injuries, but inevitable guilt as she eyed the wound made her stomach wrench in a similar fashion.

Fidgeting, debating whether to step in, trying to find the words to offer or the will to move towards him, awkward dance of hesitation between brain and body. It took him reaching up, arm twisting uncomfortably to start dabbing at the gash, for her to act.

“Do you want me to do it?”

“Depends,” he replied, peering down at her as she came to stand at his side. “Are you going to rub salt in it?”

Sending an unamused look to him from underneath her curtain of pitch-black lashes, she took the medical supplies from his hand. “You should sit down.”

He took a seat, slumping down and leaning over, fists clenched together to brace himself. She steeled herself too as she stood behind him, she had never been the resident first aider, the foreign territory of it sent a ripple of nerves over her chest. The girl gazed down at him, fiercely refusing to acknowledge how broadly stretching the slopes of his shoulders were, she zoned her focus onto the problem at hand.

“You’re still bleeding,” she sighed to herself, leaning over to grab his discarded, soiled shirt from the floor and press it against the wound. “Really did a number on you...”

“Yeah, but you should see what the other guy looks like.”

If he had been facing her, she may have bitten back the smile that teased at her lips. Dry wit in the face of adversity, it suited him. But she caught herself, his charisma had a habit of sneaking up on her, this time she caught it in time and banished the gentle respite before it could lull her into any form of security.

Minutes passed, she pulled the cloth away and let out a huff of relief.

“It’s stopped bleeding, I’ll clean it now,” she told him courteously. “Do I really need to use the alcohol?”

Adler nodded slowly. “It’s fine, just get it over with.”

Every bit the archetypal male as the rubbing alcohol made contact; Adler disguised his suffering with constant clears of his throat. He was well versed in masking physical pain, but now as she bared witness to his bare skin, she could see the way his muscles tensed and twitched in response to the harrowing stress being placed his body.

Sympathetic aches knotted her insides as she gingerly attended to the gash, but then she had an idea. She located the jacket he had been wearing earlier, picking it up, she began to dig around in the pockets until she found his carton of Winstons and a zippo lighter.

“Here,” she held them out to him.

The man glanced at the offerings with passive intrigue before his eyes flickered up to her face, lingering for a few counts too long. She didn’t allow it, turning her head to side to intercept any would be eye contact and thrusting the cigarette towards him insistently, he took them finally. “Thanks kid.”

Bell allowed him to light up his cigarette before she got back to work, he leaned over giving her easier access to the wound and blew his smoke towards the floorboards. He settled gradually, clenching his fists sporadically, circling his shoulders every once and a while.

“I could probably use more first aid training,” she mused quietly. “I’m really not very good.”

“I’ll get Sims to give you some run throughs, he’s great with it.” 

Pleasantries- kindness even, had been a sharp contrast to what Bell had been anticipating. Simultaneously it puzzled and tugged at her heart strings, but above all else, made her realise what had to be done– or said.

“I’m sorry Adler,” she began. “Sorry for hitting you, sorry for... what I said.” And it was spat out, not from malice but from the squirming shame speaking the words induced.

“I pushed you too far,” he replied, nonchalantly matter-of-fact in the admission.

“I started it,” she pulled the alcohol-soaked cotton away and tossed it into a nearby waste basket. Adler’s body untensed visibly once the offending object was out of Bell’s hand.

“Yep. And you ended it too,” he quipped, stubbing out his cigarette on the bottom of his chair. 

It made her shut her eyes for a few seconds, exhaling out hard in chagrin. 

“If it makes you feel any better,” he turned to her now, a sliver of mischievousness glinting through the fatigued haze in his eyes. “It was just a shock. You hit like a girl, Bell. It didn’t actually hurt.”

Her face lit up in surprise for a split second. She stared down at him in disbelief before she slowly broke into a restrained grin and let out a feathery laugh.

“I’m sorry too, Bell.”

Flood gates holding back her pent-up anguish were fit to burst as soon as this was spoken. Swallowing back a lump in her throat, she turned from him to grab the pot of anti-septic cream from the table, adamant in distracting herself from the hefty emotions that began to cloud over them.

But then he went on. “Not just for earlier either. I’m sorry that I’ve made you so... miserable.”

Bell heaved out, breath fluttering against his hair, she gripped onto the back of his chair tightly. She shook her head, knowing he couldn’t see her, but silently willing him to stop talking. She continued on, starting to apply the cream to his wound.

When they retreated back into silence however, she felt compelled, inspired by the small transmission between them. So she told him. “It just hurt. Because... it felt so real.” And it wasn’t substantial or elaborate, what it _was,_ was what she wanted him to hear in this moment. Bell could fill diaries, front to back, with all the different emotions- joyful and damning- she had felt towards Adler, if she counted the different combinations and the ever-spiralling complexities at least. But for now, this was all she needed.

He hummed in response to it, a plain soft sound to prove he was listening, gently coaxing her to continue, but she fell quiet again.

“On the mission,” she spoke, unabashedly switching the subject. “Did you find anything useful? Was it worth a knife to the back?”

“Knives to the back are part and parcel, Bell,” he retorted. “But this guy wasn’t exactly the spymaster we’d been hoping for. Doesn’t look like he’s responsible for whoever it is that’s got you pinned.”

“So, we’re not much closer to the end of this then,” she sighed, grabbing the dressings behind her. “That’s a shame.”

The girl began to bandage him up now, taking her time, perhaps overly cautious and steady, and she knew why. Part of her wanted them to carry on like this for a while longer, but she banished the thought, branded it ridiculous and got on with the job.

“Why do you think it felt so real, Bell?”

It stopped her dead, hands paused mid movement, breath hitched in her throat, mind blanked out. Still, her mouth fell open and her response began to tumble out. “I know it could be because you’re very convincing but...I think I wanted to believe it, so badly-” the tear that fell onto the taut skin of his shoulder caught even her by surprise, she brushed it away hastily, hoping somehow he hadn’t notice. 

“I convinced myself it was real,” she concluded hurriedly, using her wrists to combat her damp eyes. “I didn’t stop to question it, not once. That was _my_ fault.”

Bell finished securing the bandage and patted his back for good measure. “All done.”

He reached up to grasp her hand, pulling it over his shoulder and holding it near his chest, preventing her from moving away from him.

“Bell,” he spoke, as if starting something, but after that nothing else was uttered. She let him brush his thumb across her knuckles, caress her forefingers, feel the nooks and crannies of her bones, grip _too_ painstakingly tender. When her eyes began to grow leaden, when she felt herself start to drift and nearly fall towards the magnetic force of his body, it occurred to her what was happening – what she was _letting_ happen.

As if his skin had become white hot to the touch, she snatched her hand back and stepped away from him.

And it had been excellent timing, because at that second the door opened. Mason's head poked in; he opened his mouth to speak before the visible perturbation on the pairs face hindered him. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”

“No,” the two of them spoke out in unison. Adler took lead of the exchange, cutting to the point with adequately veiled impatience. “What do you need Mason?”

“Me and Woods are gonna crash here tonight, Park was wondering if she could go back to her hotel for a while, and then me and Wood can watch over...” he trailed off, scratching the back of his neck as he nodded towards the girl.

“How do you feel about that, Bell?” Adler turned to her wryly, the absurdity of that scenario not lost on him for a second.

“Whatever,” she shook her head dismissively. “Fine.”

“You sure?” Adler raised a brow at her.

“Yes.”

Mason left them alone again once that was established. Unwittingly the man had been like water to put out the fire, now all that was left of it was glowing embers and soft smoke. The tension indisputably felt by both parties had cooled. But it was there, a fire hazard threatening to blaze bright again.

“Maybe you should stay too,” she told him, an after-thought as she began to tidy their makeshift nursing station. “You don’t seem to be in a fit state to travel.”

  
His eyes bore holes into her back, she felt it, and then heard the cogs in his minds turning. “I’ll be gone by the morning.”

“Good.”

Barely an hour had passed after the house had gone dark and three exhausted bone-weary men fell into deep slumbers. Bell got out of bed.

She refused herself the right to feel shame, she pushed it back every-time it rose up, because this wasn’t forgiveness, it was just need.

The girl opened the door to the room she knew he was in, and if he heard her enter he showed no indication. The man perhaps wouldn’t be so brazen to _expect_ her, but it was equally improbably he was caught off guard by her presence.

She sought him out in the darkness, finding his warmth like a moth to a glow. He simply opened his arms for her, like the way one would wordlessly open the door for someone to allow them into their home. It was eerie, _haunting_ how they both knew not to speak. Not one word exchanged between them.

Once they spoke it was inevitably, it would lead to profoundly more heartfelt apologies whispered in the darkness, and then maybe something else, and then something else from that. So silence remained.

The girl was gluttonous in the way she drunk him in, face secured against his chest, it did the trick. As if his presence were a lethal strength sleeping aid, she drifted off within a handful minutes

She woke again, stirred by him untangling himself from her. It was for the best, better for both of them; she kept her eyes closed, steadied her breathing.

Against her closed eyelids she felt sunlight and his gaze fall over her. He leaned in, lips sweeping across her forehead. And then he was gone, just as promised.


End file.
